Rosario Dawson is being sued by a former employee who accused the actress and three of her family members of assault.
Dawson, pictured right with her mother, Isabel, is the girlfriend of New Jersey presidential candidate Cory Booker.
According to a lawsuit filed on Friday in Los Angeles and obtained by NBC News, Dawson hired a family friend, who was then a stud lesbian, to remodel her personal residence in Los Angeles in December 2017.
The female friend flew from New York to Los Angeles and moved into a home rented by the Dawson family.
Months later, the woman came out to Dawson’s family as a female-to-male (FTM) transgender known as “Dedrek Finley” with instructions for Dawson’s family to use the male pronouns he/him.
Finley, 55, claims Dawson’s family continued to use female pronouns.
The lawsuit claims “the family misgendered him multiple times each day, with deliberate indifference as to the appropriate way to address Mr. Finley.” And Rosario Dawson, “acted with deliberate indifference and did nothing to correct the situation.”
Dawson, 40, reportedly told Finley, “You’re a grown woman.”
The suit alleges that Finley was ordered to leave the Dawsons’s rented home. When Finley refused to leave, Dawson’s mother, Isabel Celeste, grabbed Finley by the arm and dragged the FTM through an open window.
The suit alleges:
“Once Mr. Finley was lying helpless on the ground outside, Isabel, who is substantially larger than Mr. Finley, got on top of Mr. Finley’s body and began punching him. While beating Mr. Finley, Isabel screamed, ‘You’re not so much of a man now,’ which was a clear and denigrating reference to Mr. Finley’s gender identity.”
A day after the alleged assault, Finley was granted a restraining order against the Dawson family.
Finley’s attorney, Tasha Hill, said they tried numerous times to reach an out-of-court settlement with the Dawsons.
“As his attorney, we have reached out numerous times to the Dawson family attorney seeking to resolve this before having to file suit,” Hill stated. She said the lawsuit was filed last week before the statute of limitations expired.
Hill stated that Rosario Dawson and her family had a good relationship with Finley in New York, when they knew Finley as a butch lesbian woman.
“When he came out to California and decided to come out to them as a transgender man, that’s when things started going south,” Hill added.
Hill said her client just wants what’s “just and fair.”
“[Finley] just wants to get some sort of compensation, so he can get back on track with his life so he can put this incident behind him,” Hills said.
