Cole Sprouse and Lili Reinhart deny "false" sexual assault allegations against them and Riverdale co-stars

22 June 2020, 16:09

Madelaine Petsch defends Riverdale cast members accused of sexual assault

By Jazmin Duribe

"False accusations do tremendous damage to victims of actual assault."

Cole Sprouse has denied claims that he sexually assaulted a woman in 2013 after three of his Riverdale cast members were hit with similar allegations on Twitter.

You've probably noticed that your timeline has been flooded with people coming forward and sharing their stories of sexual assault. Ansel Elgort recently denied sexually assaulting a girl in 2014 when she was 17, while Justin Bieber has also denied sexual assault accusations against him.

READ MORE: Vanessa Morgan calls out Riverdale for not giving black actors storylines

Now Cole Sprouse, Vanessa Morgan and Lili Reinhart have been accused of sexual assault and they have spoken out to deny the claims.

A Twitter user accused Cole Sprouse of "fondling" her breasts at a party during his time at New York University. Soon similar accounts popped up making sexual assault allegations against Vanessa Morgan and Lili Reinhart.

However, the account that accused Lili later tweeted that they had lied in order to prove how easy it is to fake a sexual assault story. They also stated that Vanessa's story was false too, tweeting: "You will believe anything."

The account that made allegations against Vanessa then alleged that the story they had posted was actually told to them by someone else. However, they later discovered that the story was "exaggerated" and deleted the tweets.

Cole decided to address the allegations against him and defend his cast mates on Twitter. He tweeted: "Earlier today myself and three other cast mates were falsely accused of sexual offense by anonymous accounts on twitter. I take these accusations very seriously, and will be working with the right teams to get to the root of it.

"False accusations do tremendous damage to victims of actual assault. Furthermore, I would never seek to silence anybody. I encourage that people look into the accusations themselves, as the events detailed were factually untrue.

"This seems to be the latest claim in a series of incidents seeking to baselessly cancel my cast mates and me."

Vanessa retweeted all three tweets, while Riverdale's Madelaine Petsch and Lili Reinhart both retweeted Cole's tweet and added their own message. Madelaine tweeted: "As someone who has been sexually assaulted, I am deeply deeply disturbed that anyone thinks that it is okay to falsely accuse someone of sexual assault. This is why real assault allegations can sometimes not be taken seriously, you should be ashamed. This is disgusting."

Madelaine, herself a victim of sexual assault, also called them out in an Instagram Story, saying: "I'm really unsure why anyone would think that that's an okay thing to do. It's so hard to go through and as someone who has been sexually assaulted I have no words. This is why I was scared to come forward and talk about my experiences with it because I was afraid someone would tell me I was lying and it didn't happen."

Speaking about the person that posted the claims and then admitted they had lied, she said: "Honestly, how dare you? This is the reason why victims are scared to come forward in the first place. This is why people don't believe sexual assault victims and yet you're doing this online."

Over on Twitter, Lili wrote: "I have always taken sexual assault allegations seriously. But it was proven that this account was created specifically to create false stories about me and my cast. I can’t think of something more twisted than lying about sexual assault. It invalidates the men and women who are.

"Brave enough to come forward with the truth. This kind of lie can ruin lives and careers- and I can call it a lie because the person who made the allegations already admitted that the stories were fabricated.

"We are looking into taking legal action. This kind of sick behavior only harms true survivors. This was incredibly triggering for me and scary because I’ve always supported survivors and believed them."

She concluded: "I hope and pray that this does not discourage real survivors from speaking out about their experiences."