“Game of Thrones” actor Joseph Gatt has sued Los Angeles County, its district attorney and more for falsely claiming he was a pedophile after being arrested and charged with alleged sexual communication with a minor in 2022. The charge was later dropped, and he’s now calling the arrest “utterly baseless” in his lawsuit for $40 million.
Gatt filed the lawsuit Thursday and is suing L.A. County District Attorney George Gascón, Los Angeles County, L.A. County Deputy District Attorney Angela Brunson, LAPD Detective Denos Amarantos and the City of Los Angeles.
The lawsuit is claiming a “shocking and intentional destruction of Joseph Gatt’s acting career and personal reputation by Los Angeles County law enforcement personnel that resulted from a thoroughly botched criminal investigation, entirely lacking any probable cause, led by an obviously conflicted Deputy District Attorney who sought to destroy Gatt based on nothing more than bias and personal animosity.”
It says that Gatt’s 2022 arrest was due to an “obsessed” 16-year-old fan whom Gatt didn’t know and has never met. In October 2020, one of the fan’s friends bought her a Cameo video message from Gatt wishing her a happy birthday. The super fan began messaging Gatt over social media, but the lawsuit says the actor responded in a manner that was “wholly appropriate and consistent with typical celebrity-fan exchanges.” The lawsuit claims the fan fabricated messages that were “sexual in nature and pure fantasy” and used a naked still image of Gatt from his appearance on the TV show “Banshee.” The suit alleges that the defendants didn’t interview the fan or asses her for credibility until one year after Gatt was arrested. At that point, he had been charged with a “baseless crime” and “publicly branded as a serial pedophile.”
The lawsuit claims that Gatt was personally targeted by Deputy District Attorney Brunson over his opposing liberal politics and support of District Attorney Gascón. It says Brunson “held personal biases and animosity toward Gatt” and “simply ignored the glaring red flags that would have caused any reasonable person to recognize the complete absence of probable cause.”
Gatt played a Thenn warg in three episodes of “Game of Thrones” and also appeared in “Black Adam,” “Thor,” “True Detective,” “Teen Wolf” and many more shows and films.
