‘Vanderpump Rules’ Alum Raquel Leviss Drops Bombshell in Revenge Porn Lawsuit Against Tom Sandoval
Vanderpump Rules alum Raquel Leviss revealed she is debating on adding additional defendants to her shocking lawsuit against her ex costars Tom Sandoval and Ariana Madix, In Touch can exclusively report.
According to court documents obtained by In Touch, Raquel, 29, informed the court this week that she may be amending her complaint to add the network and production company behind Vanderpump Rules.
Raquel, who now goes by her birth name Rachel, said she may add NBCUniversal, Bravo Media and Evolution Media to the suit in the near future.
In February, Raquel sued Tom and Ariana for allegedly sharing intimate videos of her with third parties. Raquel and Tom had an affair while Tom was with Ariana. In her lawsuit, Raquel claimed Tom had filmed their explicit FaceTime chats without permission. Ariana allegedly found one of those recordings on Tom’s phone while out with him — which led to their breakup.
Raquel accused Tom and Ariana of sharing and discussing her private videos to others.
Tom demanded the lawsuit be thrown out of court. He denied all allegations of wrongdoing.
In response, his lawyers accused Raquel’s lawsuit of being a “thinly veiled attempt to extend her fame and to rebrand herself as the victim instead of the other woman while denigrating her former friend [Ariana] as a ‘scorned woman’ and her former paramour [Tom] as ‘predatory.'”
Raquel’s lawyers, Bryan Freedman and Mark Geragos, slammed the assertion. “Sandoval’s response in the face of irrefutable evidence that will be presented in court is disturbing,” they said.
Ariana denied all allegations of wrongdoing in her response. She said she never shared the videos of Raquel with anyone.
She described finding the video of Tom’s phone. “While other women waited to use the toilet, I opened the photo app on Mr. Sandoval’s phone and was shocked to find a video of a Facetime call between Mr. Sandoval and [Raquel] that showed Mr. Sandoval’s face in the upper corner while the main image was of Plaintiff masturbating. I hurriedly took out my own phone and made two recordings of the Facetime video,” Ariana said in a declaration submitted in court.
She continued, “Prior to that moment, I considered [Raquel a friend and did not know that she and Mr. Sandoval were having an affair.”
“I did not send the videos to anyone else. Nor did I share, display, or show the videos to anyone else,” Ariana added. “To be clear, I only saw the video of [Raquel] masturbating in places secluded from others.”
In response to Tom’s answer, Raquel’s lawyer slammed him writing, “[Tom] engaged in conduct sufficiently despicable to warrant punitive damages. [Tom] is alleged to have surreptitiously recorded sexually explicit videos of [Raquel] without her knowledge or consent, in effect turning [Raquel] into an unwilling pornstar and gravely invading her right to privacy.”
Last month, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge shut down Tom’s attempt to escape the lawsuit. The judge ruled the case will be allowed to proceed.
As In Touch previously reported, Vanderpump Rules producers and Bravo are currently being sued by ex cast member Faith Stowers over alleged discrimination. They denied the accusations. The case is ongoing.
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