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FKA twigs Sues Ex-Boyfriend Shia LaBeouf For Alleged 'Relentless Abuse' And For Knowingly Giving Her An STI
FKA twigs claims that Shia LaBeouf once threatened to crash a speeding car if she didn't profess her love to him.
Musician FKA twigs is suing her former boyfriend, actor Shia LaBeouf, for alleged abuse she sustained while they were together.
The 32-year-old singer, born Tahliah Debrett Barnett, filed a lawsuit Friday against LaBeouf, 34, in Los Angeles, alleging “relentless abuse,” the New York Times reports. She claims their relationship, which lasted from 2018 to 2019, consisted of sexual battery, assault, and the infliction of emotional distress. She also claims that he intentionally gave her a sexually transmitted infection.
The lawsuit alleges that the “Transformers” star began “belittling her and berating her after the slightest perceived insult” before he would “become increasingly violent,” according to the New York Daily News.
“On one occasion around Valentine’s Day 2019, LaBeouf forcibly slammed Tahliah against his car and strangled her after she was trying to escape from one of his manic tirades,” the lawsuit alleges.
Just before that incident, Barnett claims that LaBeouf was speeding down a highway when he removed his seatbelt and threatened to crash unless she professed her love for him.
She told the New York Times that with the lawsuit, she wants “to raise awareness on the tactics that abusers use to control you and take away your agency.”
Barnett is not asking for monetary compensation.
The musician added that she had felt caught in a cycle that she could not exit when she and the actor were together.
While LaBeouf has yet to comment on the lawsuit itself, he told the New York Times on Thursday over email that, “I’m not in any position to tell anyone how my behavior made them feel.”
He added, “I have no excuses for my alcoholism or aggression, only rationalizations. I have been abusive to myself and everyone around me for years. I have a history of hurting the people closest to me. I’m ashamed of that history and am sorry to those I hurt. There is nothing else I can really say.”
LaBeouf has also said he suffers from PTSD.
Stylist Karolyn Pho, another ex-girlfriend of LaBeouf, told the New York Times that the star also abused her. She alleged that he once pinned her to a bed and head-butted her, drawing blood.
The lawsuit accused LeBeouf of being a “dangerous” man who physically and mentally abuses women.
“For too long, LaBeouf has sought to excuse his reprehensible actions as the eccentricities of a free-thinking ‘artist,’” it says, the Daily News reports.
For a number of years, the actor gained notoriety, and perhaps infamy, for numerous, provocative performance art projects, including wearing a bag over his head during a red carpet premiere in 2014.
He has also been arrested several times in recent years, including a 2017 incident in which he was charged with obstruction, disorderly conduct, and public drunkenness. The charges were later dismissed, though in 2019, while accepting a screenwriting award for his film "Honey Boy," he thanked the officers for changing his life. He was charged in September of 2020 for misdemeanor battery and petty theft for allegedly fighting with a man and stealing his hat in June, NBC News reported earlier this year.
LaBeouf told the New York Times that he is “committed to doing what I need to do to recover, and I will forever be sorry to the people that I may have harmed along the way.”
