Lowe in Trouble Again as Former Nanny Files Sex Abuse Countersuit

Rob Lowe is in trouble again, this time in the form of Jessica Gibson, the 24-year old nanny against whom Lowe and his wife had filed suit for violating a confidentiality agreement. Gibson has now filed a suit of her own, and the allegations she makes in it are quite serious.

Gibson filed her lawsuit in Santa Barbara Superior County Court and sought general damages worth $50,000 along with unpaid wages and punitive damages which were not specified. Lowe was paying Gibson $18 per hour for her work.

Earlier last week, Lowe had sued Gibson and two other ex-employees, accusing them of violating confidentiality agreements that were part of the documents they had signed at the time of employment. He also accused Gibson of lying about having sex with him. Gibson had been working with them since she was 17, and quit her job abruptly towards the end of February.

In her counter-suit, Gibson alleged she had been sexually harassed by the 44-year old Emmy nominated actor. The list of things Gibson has accused Lowe of is quite long, from putting his hands inside her pants, grabbing her backside, exposing his private parts to her and masturbating before her, and also showing her pornographic material.

Lowe is not the only person Gibson accuses of inappropriate behavior in her lawsuit. She also accuses Sheryl, Lowe’s wife, of moving around naked in the house, passing lewd remarks before her and also telling her once that she would not be able to find a boyfriend as the only people interested in having sex with her would be married men.

Making a statement, Gloria Allred, Gibson’s attorney, said, “The rich and famous are not above the law. They are not granted any special immunities. The rich and famous, just like any other employer, must not sexually abuse their employees.”

On the day Lowe filed the lawsuits against Gibson and the two former employees, he had mentioned on the website of the Huffington Post that Gibson had left her job without offering any explanation and was also asking him to pay $1.5 million. He said Gibson had threatened to ‘accuse us of a vicious laundry list of false terribles.’

Lowe had also put up text messages sent to him by Gibson, in which she apologized for leaving abruptly and said she did not ‘leave out of spite or anger.’ In her messages, she also said she had ‘nothing bad 2 say’ about Lowe and his wife.

Allred said the only reason Gibson sent Lowe those messages was to placate him. She said, “She was trying to flee the situation, get away from it. She was afraid of risking their anger at that point.”

Appearing on Today, the NBC talk show, Gibson said she stayed with the Lowes, who had two sons, aged 13 and 14 for seven years despite being abused because she loved the kids and needed the job. She said she always felt that things would change for the better, and was also scared at the same time.

Lowe is no stranger to controversy. He became the epicenter of a major scandal when he was caught on film having sex with two women, one of whom was a teenager, during the Democratic National Convention in Atlanta in the late 1980s.