After Robert Knepper was accused of sexually assaulting stylist Susan Bertram on the set of 1992’s Gas, Food, Lodging, four more women have now accused the actor of assault. Between 1983 and 2013, the women all say that Knepper allegedly cornered them alone in a room, and grabbed their crotches or forcibly kissed them. In a statement to The Hollywood Reporter, Knepper denied each allegation: “We have come to a time where hard-earned careers are being lost on the basis of accusations. I need to reiterate that these accusations against me are false. We have lost the presumption of innocence; we have lost ‘due process’; and we have lost the ability to review evidence — allowing the media to become both ‘judge and jury,’” he wrote. “Until I can sit down and have a dialogue with my accusers, managed not by the press but by an impartial mediator, I have nothing further to say on this matter. My wife, family and close friends, know me and my true nature and I am grateful for their love and support.”
Two women — Robin Saex Garbose and a woman who declined to be identified — allege that Knepper cornered them when they were working as production assistants in the 1980s. Garbose was a casting assistant for a 1983 theater production of June Moon. When Knepper came in to audition, Garbose said he allegedly cornered her in an office and kissed her. In 1989, a woman who declined to be identified was working on a production at San Diego’s La Jolla Playhouse. She was asked to help Knepper move into his apartment, and he allegedly cornered her, kissed her, and grabbed her crotch. “I was really smashed against the wall,” she told THR. “It was shocking. His tongue was down my throat. You don’t know what to do. It was just so stunning. It was shocking, really. I had met this person maybe five minutes before.”
Emma Julia Jacobs was working on the set of Planet of the Apes when Knepper allegedly followed her up to her hotel room and tried to have sex with her. As she tried to fight him off, she said, he forced her to perform oral sex on him, and then held her down and masturbated on her. Writer-director Christy Oldham says she spoke to Knepper during the reception after a screening, when he asked if she wanted to continue the conversation over a meal. There, she said, he was sexually aggressive and pushed her against a wall. “His face [was] mere inches from mine,” she wrote in her diary at the time. “I pushed him off of me and walked back to the Egyptian. What a fucking loser.”
