Author Amy Griffin sues woman who alleged she stole her stories of
sexual abuse in memoir 'The Tell'
[June 16, 2026]
By ANDREW DALTON
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Author Amy Griffin sued a former classmate for
defamation on Monday, saying the woman's statements in a New York Times
story and a subsequent lawsuit alleging Griffin appropriated her stories
of sexual abuse for her bestselling 2025 memoir “The Tell” are false in
“every element.”
Griffin’s lawsuit, filed in federal court in Nevada, says that in 2025
her former middle school classmate “told The New York Times — and
through it, the world — that Amy Griffin is a fraud and a thief.”
The lawsuit says that in the woman's telling, “Mrs. Griffin stole the
rape of another woman and built a bestseller on it.”
A Times spokesperson said the lawsuit misrepresents its story and
reporting. The former classmate said her account will prove true in
court.
In “The Tell,” a hit that became an Oprah's Book Club selection,
Griffin, a venture capitalist and memoirist, recounts being sexually
abused as a child by a teacher at her middle school in Amarillo, Texas,
and writes that years later she recovered memories of the experience by
undergoing therapy using the psychedelic drug MDMA.
The Times story published six months after the book included stories
from a classmate who said some of Griffin's experiences were eerily
similar to her own. Then in March the woman filed a lawsuit in
California state court, which Griffin is fighting and seeking to have
dismissed.
The Associated Press doesn’t typically name people who say they have
been sexually abused unless they come forward publicly or otherwise
consent. The woman who sued Griffin filed her lawsuit as Jane Doe, and
her name did not appear in the Times story.
Griffin says documentation backs her in every aspect
Griffin's lawsuit says the most essential fact is that she put her
account of her abuse in writing in 2020, and in 2021 she provided
another detailed and documented account in an interview with the
Amarillo Police Department. Both accounts match up with the book, and
both came before Griffin is alleged to have extracted the woman's abuse
story by having someone posing as a talent agent call her in 2022,
according to the lawsuit. The statute of limitations prevented the
criminal investigation from moving forward.
Griffin's lawsuit says the woman falsely claimed to be another middle
school classmate who appears in “The Tell” under the pseudonym
“Claudia,” whose meeting with the author is recounted in the book. The
lawsuit Griffin had not talked to the woman in more than 35 years, had
never been part of the same church youth group as alleged, and was
demonstrably not in the Palm Springs area in 2019 — or the years before
or after — when the woman claims the two of them met for coffee.
Griffin's lawsuit says the coffee shop conversation with “Claudia” took
place thousands of miles away in the presence of a collaborator, and
that the woman in the Times story had been unable to produce any
evidence the meeting with her had taken place.
[to top of second column]
|
G9 Ventures founder Amy Griffin attends the Time100 Gala in New
York, April 24, 2025. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP File)
Accuser says this is an attempt to silence her
In an email to The Associated Press sent through her lawyers, the woman
said the shame and humiliation from her sexual assault were unimaginable
and she was “violated all over again after reading about my own
experiences in Amy’s book.”
“Despite trying to remain anonymous, Amy has now chosen to use her
immense wealth and influence to try and silence me,” the email said.
“She has had her lawyers identify me publicly as well as sue me. I am
shocked and disappointed that she would choose to take this route,
especially since she herself knows the truth.”
Griffin's lawsuit seeks a declaration that the allegations that she
stole the woman's abuse stories are false, along with financial damages
to be determined at trial.
New York Times stands by its reporting and story
Griffin's lawsuit, while not naming the Times as a defendant, is harshly
critical of the paper, saying it "deemed the story too good to
scrutinize” despite Griffin's lawyers making it clear the woman's
account was “demonstrably false.”
Times spokesperson Danielle Rhoades Ha said in an email to the AP that
the lawsuit and related filings “repeatedly misrepresent The New York
Times story and its reporting,” and that the article “is markedly
different in key aspects put forth” in both women's lawsuits.
Rhoades points out that many of the allegations Griffin is pushing back
against did not appear in the Times' story, including that the woman
they spoke to was “Claudia,” or that a person posing as a talent agent
on Griffin's behalf called to get her stories of abuse.
And Rhoades said the Times story did not say Griffin “misappropriated”
the woman's story, and she said claims that the reporters did not vet
their story are false, and that they “engaged extensively with Ms.
Griffin’s legal representatives prior to publication including
meticulous fact checking.”
“Our story was about a publishing phenomenon, the reliability of
memories recovered while under the influence of MDMA and the impact of a
bestselling memoir on the author’s hometown,” Rhoades said. “Our
reporters’ only agenda was to pursue the facts, including corroboration
of accounts from all sources.”
All contents © copyright 2026 Associated Press. All rights reserved |
