LOS ANGELES (CN) — Joseph Gatt, a British actor who played a member of a gang of cannibalistic Thenns in the HBO series "Game of Thrones," filed a federal civil rights action against the Los Angeles district attorney, claiming recently dropped charges he engaged in explicit sexual communications with a minor ruined his career.
Gatt, 52, says in a complaint filed Thursday in Los Angeles that his arrest in April 2022 and subsequent prosecution were based on unauthenticated pictures from social media conversations that were obviously fake.
"Defendants prosecuted Gatt for an electronic crime with utter disregard for the vast amount of electronic evidence that was readily available to them and which would have definitively shown that the electronic communications on which the prosecution was based were entirely fabricated," Gatt says in his complaint.
Prosecutors with the DA's office, Gatt claims, simply ignored the "glaring red flags that would have caused any reasonable person to recognize the complete absence of probable cause," and proceeded to have him arrested, prosecuted and publicly branded as a pedophile.
The DA's office voluntarily dropped the charges against Gatt in February of this year.
A spokesperson for the office said they can't comment on pending civil litigation.
Gatt says that In the wake of his arrest, his agent and pubic relations representatives dropped him, he was fired from two movies in which he had been cast, his scenes were cut from two other movies that had already been filmed, he was no longer invited to movie premieres, and he didn't receive any further offers for movie roles or auditions.
The DA's prosecution, Gatt says, was based solely on the uncorroborated word of a then-16-year-old, admittedly obsessed fan whom he didn't know and had never met, and whom prosecutors never interviewed to assess her credibility until almost a year after his arrest.
The woman, identified as Jane Doe in the lawsuit, fabricated fake conversations on Snapchat between herself and Gatt that were sexual in nature and "pure fantasy," Gatt says in his complaint. One of Doe's older sisters discovered the conversations and took screenshots of them with her own phone, which she sent to the police in Kent County, Washington state.
When interviewed by Kent police, Doe confirmed that she was a fan of and had a crush on Gatt, but she also falsely accused Gatt of engaging in electronic communications with her that were sexually explicit in nature.
However, "even a cursory review of these screenshots reveals unreconcilable conflicts that simply would not exist if the conversations were legitimate and had actually occurred," Gatt says in his lawsuit.
Despite this, he says, neither the Kent Police Department or the LA district attorney's office "bothered at the time to review or forensically examine Jane Doe’s phone to verify whether these conversations were legitimate and actually took place, or were instead simply fantasies concocted by an admittedly obsessed fan trying to trick or impress her friends, before recklessly destroying Gatt’s career."
The actor, who has been living in LA since 2005, further claims his prosecution was led by a deputy district attorney who had a personal animosity toward him in part because of his liberal beliefs.
Gatt claims District Attorney George Gascón and the other defendants violated his constitutional rights under the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment, and he claims the city of Los Angeles and Los Angeles County are liable for unconstitutional practices and policies that led to his arrest and prosecution.
He seeks more than $40 million in damages.
Gatt is represented by Constantine Pamphilis, J. Michael Wilson, Sara Wolfe and Daniel Saunders of Kasowitz Benson Torres LLP.
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