UPDATE, NOV. 28, 5:11 P.M.: An attorney who says she represents David F. Klassen contacted the Weekly to counter accusations her client created a website to discredit a transgender singer who performs under the name Bralalalala.
The lawyer, Yolanda Marsili of Newport Beach, says that neither she nor Klassen, an art director for Hollywood movies such as Spider-Man 3, “owns” the site Bralalala.com.
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Marsili's claim is now noted in the original version of this post below.
Bralalala.com claims that a lawsuit Bralalalala brought, under the name Brooke Skiles, in Orange County Superior Court against Klassen and Marsili is without merit. The site goes on to paint the accuser as a scam artist.
ORIGINAL POST, NOV. 23, 9:12 A.M.: A confusing case involving a transgender singer who alleges she was
sexually assaulted and a Hollywood art director who accuses her of being
a scam artist is playing out in Orange County Superior Court.
The art director is David F. Klassen, whose credits include Iron Man, Spider-Man 3 and next year's much-anticipated The Amazing Spider-Man. His accuser performs as Bralalalala, but she and/or he goes by several names and either sexuality to hear Klassen tell it.
Klassen and Bralalalala do not even agree on the incident that started their legal tug-of-war. Here is the transgender artist's version:
She responded online to a craigslist ad for a “strictly platonic” friend placed by Klassen's girlfriend, Yolanda Marsili. Bralalalala met Marsili at her Newport Beach home where they were to go out with Marsili's other friends to a dance club. But those other friends never showed up. What Barlalalala did not know was Marsili shared the home with Klassen, who became infatuated after his girlfriend showed him the transgender singer's Myspace page. Klassen would go on to sexually assault Bralalalala, who says she filed a report with Newport Beach police.
Klassen claims that never happened, that he met who was presented to him as a woman but later learned was a transgender prostitute.
Brent Skiles, Brant Skiles, Brooke Jason Skiles, Brant J Skiles, Brant
Jason Skiles, Jeanne Jorgenson, Erala Jorgensen, Erica Jorgensen, Emily
Dickinson, Cindy, Stacy, Jenny, Heather and who knows how many others.”
According to the site–which Bralalalala and some transgender advocates have labeled “a hate site”–the singer has used the aliases to extort money out of everyone from college students to the producers of the LA Music Awards. But most victims reside in wealthy SoCal enclaves like Newport Beach, claims the site, which includes photos of Bralalalala as a man, links to the legal paper trail the alleged scammer has created and personal ads and provocative photos Bralalalala's online detractor says are used to lure marks.
The site claims Newport Beach Police and the district attorney's office dropped criminal investigations into whatever happened at Klassen's home. His attorney filed motions to get Bralalalala's lawsuit–filed under the name Brooke Skiles–tossed and to countersue alleging extortion. A hearing to consider a dismissal is set for Monday.
Skiles, who created her own blog to rebuff the website (title: “A Tansgender Woman Does Not Mean Whore”), claims those motions have been denied, that her lawsuit still has legs and that cops and prosecutors are still investigating the art director.
How ever this all plays out, it could make a great movie.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.