Former Highland Park baseball star Ryan Romo has filed a defamation suit against the family of the girl who accused him of rape last October.
Filed today in district court, the suit alleges that the girl’s family hoped to use the incident as a type of money-making scheme, and that the family “acted with malice, fraud and oppression and/or in conscious disregard of Ryan Romo’s rights, and with specific intent to cause substantial injury or harm to Ryan Romo.” The Romo family is seeking an unspecified amount.
CultureMap originally reported the civil suit.
Back in January, a grand jury did not indict Romo for the alleged rape. On Jan. 29, Romo family attorney Mark Senter told reporters “truth and justice prevailed.” He also said the family has “not considered any civil litigation at this point”; that has obviously changed.
The suit claims that the girl’s parents exercised little control over the teen, allowing her to drink heavily before the Oct. 27 Ghostland Observatory show. The civil filing goes into detail about what, according to Romo, happened in the backseat of his SUV following the show, contending that the acts were consensual.
On Jan. 12, two months after Romo took a polygraph test about the incident, the Romo family met with the girl’s mother and stepfather. At this meeting, the girl’s parents allegedly informed the Romos “that they would seek to have the criminal charges dropped against Ryan if the Romos would meet their various demands.” The demands are not outlined in the filing, but included money, the filing reads. Two weeks later, Romo was cleared criminally.
The Romo family is suing for malicious prosecution, negligence and vicarious liability, negligence, negligent supervision, and defamation. Some counts are filed against the parents, some against the girl.
