Dwight Howard has denied accusations by a Georgia man who says he was sexually assaulted by the former NBA star and another person.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Stephen Harper filed a state civil suit against Howard in July, alleging assault and battery, false imprisonment and intentional infliction of emotional distress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In a response filed this week by his attorney, Howard described the 2021 encounter at his home in the Atlanta suburbs as consensual and requested that the case be dismissed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Harper\u2019s lawsuit says he met Howard through Instagram and they exchanged explicit text messages before arranging to meet at Howard\u2019s home on July 19, 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While on his way to the Gwinnett County residence, Harper says Howard texted him to ask if another man or woman could join their planned sexual encounter. Harper says he told Howard he was not interested.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Once at Howard\u2019s home, Harper claims they were joined by a man dressed as a woman who identified only as \u201cKitty.\u201d Harper says he tried to resist the two men, but Howard and Kitty forced him to participate in sexual activity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mr. Harper was trapped in Defendant\u2019s bedroom and believed that he would suffer imminent bodily harm if he resisted Defendant\u2019s sexual advances,\u201d the lawsuit said. Afterward, \u201cMr. Harper felt extremely violated and humiliated, and was in complete shock.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Howard denied the allegations in his response, which says the three men agreed to \u201cengage in consensual sexual activity.\u201d He asked for a summary judgment, with court costs and attorney fees to be assessed against Harper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Associated Press does not typically identify people who say they have been victims of sexual assault unless they have agreed to be named publicly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The 37-year-old Howard was an eight-time All Star, three-time defensive player of the year and one of the NBA\u2019s most dominant centers during the prime of his 18-year professional career.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He played for seven franchises, most notably the Orlando Magic \u2014 who took him with the No. 1 overall selection in the 2004 draft out of Southwest Atlanta Christian Academy \u2014 and the Los Angeles Lakers, the team he was with for his lone NBA title<\/strong> during the pandemic-affected 2019-20 season.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Howard had three different stints with the Lakers, including in 2021-22, his last NBA season. He has career averages of 15.7 points and 11.8 rebounds per game, leading the league in rebounding five times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But Howard also had the reputation as being a disruptive presence in the locker room, not spending more than one season with the same team over his last six seasons in the league. Howard played in Taiwan during the 2022-23 season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Dwight Howard has denied accusations by a Georgia man who says he was sexually assaulted by the former NBA star and another person. Stephen Harper filed a state civil suit against Howard in July, alleging assault and battery, false imprisonment and intentional infliction of emotional distress. In a response filed this week by his attorney, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":39252,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_post_source_name":"","_post_source_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[11264,183,6202,7960,8927,10507,10796,12774,11638,8484,8394,5205,7123,12309,3283,11973,5485,10238,3558,1664,2711,5353,9539,5273,594],"class_list":["post-39251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-news","tag-allegations","tag-assault","tag-atlanta","tag-case","tag-christian","tag-court","tag-dwight-howard","tag-fees","tag-forced","tag-georgia","tag-instagram","tag-july","tag-los-angeles","tag-men","tag-nba","tag-one","tag-pandemic","tag-sexual-assault","tag-sexual-assualt","tag-stephen","tag-taiwan","tag-trapped","tag-victims","tag-woman","tag-who"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39251"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39251\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39253,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39251\/revisions\/39253"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39252"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}