In a new court filing, the former child actress Raquel Lee alleges she was repeatedly raped and sexually assaulted by a Disney worker during production of The Poof Point, a 2001 Disney Channel original movie. The suit, which doesn’t name the perpetrator, accuses the studio of negligence.
Lee, who was 14 years old at the time, claims that a “middle-aged, male employee who was involved in the filming of the movie” groomed and then assaulted her, first on multiple occasions in his room at a hotel where the cast and crew were staying during production in Salt Lake City and then later on a flight back to Los Angeles. In addition, the alleged assailant “regularly whispered sexually explicit and harassing comments” into her ear while on set and “used hugs to get close to her.”
The complaint contends that this misconduct was done “in plain view of the cast and crew and could be heard by the sound technicians managing the cast’s microphones” — yet “no one at Disney intervened.” The filing also asserts that the man “regularly made sexually explicit jokes and commentary on the set” around minors, including “sexually explicit comments about” Lee’s body. (In addition, she was allegedly allowed to be separated from her on-set guardian “for the vast majority of each day.”)
Lee notes that her professional performance soon noticeably declined and that multiple Disney executives attacked her “changed behavior and trauma response,” accusing her of “being ‘out of control,’ causing the movie to go ‘haywire,’ ‘need[ing] Jesus,’ having ‘a demon inside her’ and engaging in sex acts with a member of the crew at the age of 14.” The litigation adds, “Disney threatened to, and did, cancel” her role in a then-forthcoming production with the studio.
Lee is represented by Doug Wigdor, a prominent plaintiffs’ employment and sexual-misconduct lawyer. He has previously represented Cassie Ventura against Sean “Diddy” Combs; Nafissatou Diallo, the hotel housekeeper who accused then-IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn of sexual assault; and multiple women who alleged misconduct by Harvey Weinstein.
Disney declined to comment on the litigation. In a statement, Wigdor and his colleague Jane Kim said: “Over the last decade, countless child actors have come forward to bravely share their experiences of abuse by adults in entertainment.As former government prosecutors, our message to the entertainment industry is simple: This conduct is inexcusable, and those involved — directly or indirectly — must be held accountable.”
The complaint contends that Lee’s experience was part of a long pattern at the studio: “This is not the first time that Disney has enabled a sexual predator to target and abuse vulnerable victims.” Wigdor’s filing cites a litany of previously reported accusations of predatory misconduct over decades which have been connected to the company.
Shortly after The Poof Point, Lee went on to recur as a voiceover artist on the Disney Channel animated sitcom The Proud Family, and recently participated again in its Disney+ revival, The Proud Family: Louder and Prouder. She also worked with the company when she appeared on FX’s Snowfall in 2019.
In addition, Lee participated in the hit 2024 docuseries Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV, in which she reflected on her treatment as a Black performer on Nickelodeon’s The Amanda Show. She didn’t levy her The Poof Point claims in the docuseries, which became a cultural phenomenon for its focus on alleged misconduct against child actors. However, after its airing, she noted that Drake Bell’s discussion of experiencing on-set sexual abuse was “retraumatizing” for her.