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London police are reportedly asking magician David Blaine to fly to England as they investigate an alleged rape from 13 years ago.
Model Natasha Prince claims Blaine, 44, raped her in 2004, according to The Daily Beast.
Scotland Yard could not identify who is under investigation but confirmed that “officers from the Met’s Child Abuse and Sexual Offences Command are investigating an allegation of rape.”
“The allegation was reported to police on 17 November 2016 by a woman who alleged she was raped at an address in Chelsea in June or July 2004 when she was aged 21,” they said in a statement. “There have been no arrests at this stage and enquiries continue.”
Blaine’s attorney Marty Singer denied the allegations, telling the outlet, “My client vehemently denies that he raped or sexually assaulted any woman, ever, and he specifically denies raping a woman in 2004,” the statement said. “If, in fact, there is any police investigation, my client will fully cooperate because he has nothing to hide.”
Blaine is known for his death-defying stunts; his most recent project, the 2016 TV special Beyond Magic, featured a trick in which he fired a bullet into his mouth.
Prince, 32, told The Daily Beast that she met Blaine at a club, and he invited her to his friend’s mansion for drinks the next day, and she alleges that he led her into the bedroom.
“He spun around quite quickly and said, ‘Kiss me.’ I did kiss him. And then he said, ‘Finish your drink’ and took the glass from me and put it on the table, and that’s really the last thing I remember,” she said. “At some point, I was on the bed, face-forward, and he was behind me. I think it woke me up a little bit, because I’d never had that [anal sex] done to me before. I remember moving around a lot. I was limp, and I was very floaty; I was in and out of a deep sleep.”
She said she ran into him on three other occasions over the years and quit modeling at 24 due to anxiety stemming from the alleged assault.
“The last time my client saw Ms. Prince was approximately five years ago, on the streets of New York, where Ms. Prince approached my client and invited him to see her at the Gagosian Gallery, where she works,” Singer said. “This conduct is completely inconsistent with any claim that my client engaged in any wrongful conduct approximately 13 years ago with Ms. Prince.”
She filed a police report last November.
“You have to understand, my interpretation was that it was my fault,” she said of why she waited to go to the authorities. “I didn’t think of it as rape. In my head, rape was being sober — pull her in a bush, pull down her pants and just ditch her… So I blamed myself. I did like him. I was interested in him. So I didn’t think about going to the police.”
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