LOS ANGELES — Hollywood producer David Guillod surrendered to authorities in Santa Barbara County on Monday after a three-year investigation culminated in him being charged with the rape or sexual assault of three women.
Guillod, a high-profile Hollywood talent manager, is facing 11 felony charges, including rape, kidnap to commit rape and rape of a drugged victim in connection with three alleged attacks in May 2012, December 2014 and January 2015.
The producer of the movies “Atomic Blonde” and Netflix’s “Extraction” was accompanied by his lawyer when he turned himself in to Santa Barbara County sheriff’s investigators Monday.
Guillod is charged with sexually assaulting a woman in Los Angeles in May 2012. He is also accused of raping an employee for a management firm he operated during a December 2014 wine country retreat in Santa Barbara County. The woman received a $60,000 payment and was required to sign a nondisclosure agreement before leaving the company, according to sources familiar with the allegations.
She, however, reported Guillod’s alleged attack to Los Angeles police in 2017 after other women reported being sexually assaulted by him.
Guillod’s third alleged attack, in January 2015, involves a woman from Santa Barbara County, according to sources.
After actress Jessica Barth in October 2017 publicly accused Guillod of drugging and raping her in 2012, Guillod stepped down as chief executive of Primal Wave Entertainment. Barth first reported her allegations in 2012 to the Los Angeles Police Department.
Barth has previously said she dropped pursuing the attack with authorities. But in the wake of the #MeToo movement in the fall of 2017, Barth returned to the LAPD and asked officials to pursue the investigation.
Authorities did not identify the women who said Guillod attacked them.
According to Barth’s public account, she went to dinner with Guillod and another woman and she remembers feeling drowsy at the table. She said she woke up “at home with six hickeys on my neck. I was horrified. I was completely and utterly confused and I was sick to my stomach.”
According to law enforcement sources, she told several other people about the incident.
Guillod was accompanied by his attorney, Philip Cohen, as he surrendered to Santa Barbara County authorities.
“For the past eight years, Mr. Guillod has denied these allegations, and for the past eight years Mr. Guillod has fully cooperated with all aspects of law enforcement’s investigation. We find the unification of the cases filed through the Santa Barbara D.A.’s office and the timing suspicious,” Cohen said in a statement.
Cohen on Monday claimed that “evidence has been collected over the course of this investigation disputing these charges.”
Among the claims Cohen made was that DNA has come back negative in the Los Angeles case; witnesses have come forward in support of Guillod’s account of events; and numerous text messages and emails obtained by the defense tell a story very different than that which is being alleged. His lawyer said that Guillod has passed five independent polygraph examinations. Such tests are not usable in criminal courts.
“Mr. Guillod has been vilified for eight years without being afforded the opportunity to examine under oath his accusers. Justice is rarely swift and often does not come easy; but Mr. Guillod very much looks forward to clearing his name in the appropriate forum,” Cohen said in his statement.
After Barth and the other unnamed women came forward in 2017, several female stars quit being managed by the Guillod talent firm.
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