Credit: Instagram, Disney/Christopher Willard
Rachel “Raquel” Leviss is responding to Ariana Madix‘s request to be dismissed from the revenge porn lawsuit she filed against her earlier this year.
According to a new report, the 29-year-old Vanderpump Rules alum recently filed an opposition to her former castmate’s request to be dropped from the case, in which she’s also accused of violating Raquel’s privacy and eavesdropping, after Ariana, 38, denied sending the sexually explicit FaceTime recordings taken by her ex-boyfriend, Tom Sandoval, 41, amid his and Raquel’s months-long affair.
On June 29, In Touch Weekly confirmed that Raquel’s attorney had called Ariana’s request for dismissal “frivolous.”
“Indeed, the conduct at issue is not Madix’s exercise of free speech but instead her unlawful theft and distribution of sexually explicit videos of [Raquel],” they stated in a motion. “Although Madix attempts to recast the lawsuit as an attack on her right to speak freely on matters of public concern, it is no such thing. Madix does not have a free speech right to break into the phone of her boyfriend and siphon away nonconsensual pornographic materials. Nor does she have a legal right to disseminate such material to menace and terrorize.”
“If all Madix had done was angrily confront [Raquel] for betraying her trust or publicly discuss her discovery of [Tom’s] affair, she would not be a defendant in this lawsuit. But that is not what is at issue. Her actions went well beyond protected speech, and her anger — however understandable — provides no legal cover for lashing out at Plaintiff in violation of multiple criminal laws,” the lawyer added.
Raquel also made her own declaration in the newly filed documents.
“Sandoval never asked my permission to record them, and I was not aware he was doing so. Had he asked, I would have said no. If I had known he had done so anyway, I would have been furious and demanded he delete them. Under no circumstances would I have consented to being recorded naked and masturbating,” she stated.
According to Raquel, Ariana sent her three messages after learning of the affair, two of which allegedly were recordings of the FaceTime sessions, and a third that said, “You are DEAD TO ME[.]”
“I looked at the video recordings, which did not look familiar, and I saw that they depicted me undressed and masturbating, with Sandoval’s face visible in the comer of the screen. I realized that these recordings depicted my private, intimate video calls with Sandoval, which he had evidently recorded without my knowledge or consent. These particular recordings were captured in or around February 2023 while I was in a private residence. Given Sandoval’s apparent practice of secretly recording me, I have every reason to believe that he captured additional sexually compromising videos and/or images of me,” Raquel stated. “None of these intimate conversations were part of Vanderpump Rules. They were private communications reflecting a clandestine affair; neither their contents nor their existence were ever supposed to see the light of day. I had every expectation of privacy and remain appalled that Sandoval has put me in this position.”
Continuing on, Raquel said she was alarmed by the messages Ariana sent her because they came from Ariana’s phone, not Sandoval’s.
“I knew that she had somehow taken possession of them. This made an already difficult situation decidedly worse. From the tone and tenor of Madix’s messages, it was clear that she was furiously angry. Given the circumstances, I was not surprised at her anger, but I was extremely alarmed and fearful about her intentions given the course of conduct she had evidently embarked on,” Raquel explained. “It is not just that Madix had discovered the recordings and confronted me about their contents. If that were all that happened, Madix would not have been named in this lawsuit. But that is not all that happened. In her own sworn testimony, Madix acknowledges that she stole and disseminated them. She distributed the recordings from their original source on Sandoval’s phone to herself and to me at a minimum.”
“There is every reason to believe that she showed the recordings to others and may have sent them to others as well. It is undisputed, however, that as a result of Madix’s actions, the circle of possession widened from Sandoval alone to Sandoval, Madix, and me,” Raquel added.
In another report shared by In Touch, it was noted that Raquel also alluded to the potential addition of Bravo and her former Pump Rules producers to her lawsuit in her documents, although it doesn’t appear that she has done so yet.
A judge has yet to rule on Raquel’s opposition to Ariana’s dismissal request.
