A music executive is facing rape allegations after two women claimed he drugged them inside his lavish $6.55 million Joshua Tree mansion in California.
Scott Leonard, 59, who bills himself as a former artist manager and major record label executive, owns the unique Kellogg Doolittle house on a cliff nestled in the mountains, where he often hosts celebrity-filled parties, Los Angeles Times reported.
Model and writer Courtney Barriger, 36, and Australian musician Jamie-Lee Dimes, 35, shared painful memories of being inside his home, where they allege Leonard supplied them with drugs.
Both women reported the alleged incidents to the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department, and Leonard has not been charged in either case, the Times reported.
“This has been one of the worst times of my life. If this is what I have to put up with to have a career in music, I’d rather talk,” Dimes said in an interview with the outlet.
“I’m all for raising awareness about abuse in the music industry,” she told DailyMail.com.
Scott Leonard, 59, a former artist manager and major record label executive, owns the unique cliffside Kellogg Doolittle home. Courtney Barriger, 36, and Jamie-Lee Dimes, 35, claim he drugged them there.
Dimes filed a police report with the sheriff’s office and detailed her alleged rape by Leonard, which she said occurred after she met him in August 2022.
In the report, she explained how she met Leonard, who she says worked in artist development at Virgin Records America, through mutual friends. He soon invited her to his home to discuss her music career.
“The fact that I met him in Joshua Tree, which is a very communal place, and not in Los Angeles, made me feel like I could trust him,” she said.
Dimes went to Leonard’s house and played a couple of songs for him before “slapping me on the butt a few times” and “asking me who was the oldest person I had had sex with,” the report said.
“I felt uncomfortable and tried to change the subject,” she said.
‘From the moment I met Scott, I was very clear that I would never have sex with him.’
He said he began to feel “under the influence of this strong tranquilizer” about an hour later.
Leonard then took Dimes into a bedroom, where she recalled he was “behind me and on top of me,” the report said.
She added that his “hands were in my vagina” before “he was on top of me, penetrating me with what is believed to be his penis, but it is cloudy.”
Dimes continued: ‘I don’t remember how I got there, but my clothes were on the floor when I woke up.
“He was naked next to me, which scared me because there was no way I could give consent… I saw blood all over my thighs, my menstrual cup was stuck in my cervix. I couldn’t walk and I was screaming.”
The next morning, Dimes woke up with “bruises on her wrist… shoulder, stomach and lower abdomen, thighs and a damaged toe,” she said in the report.
In August 2022, Dimes filed a police report with the sheriff’s office and detailed her alleged sexual assault experience with Leonard.
According to the report, Dimes said Leonard told her: ‘You have to leave now, don’t talk to any of the workers when you leave, you’re really screwed.’
Still disoriented, she drove home as she had a flight to catch to Australia. Days later, Dimes told Gold Coast police what happened, according to the report.
In December, Australian investigators sent the clothes she was wearing that night to San Bernardino. The clothes and DNA samples were stored in a closet for evidence, the Times reported.
“I was so severely traumatized that I couldn’t function,” she told police.
‘I honestly feel like my whole life has been turned upside down because this man took advantage of me, sexually assaulted me… and thought I wouldn’t say anything because of his business and music connections.’
Barriger, an author and creator of Eco Fashion Label, said she had known Leonard and his partner, Keiko Harada, for about seven years. Barriger, who later moved with her then-partner into a trailer across the street from Leonard’s home, was initially introduced to him “as someone with a lot of influence,” she told the Times.
In November 2021, Leonard and Harada invited the couple to their home for a reunion.
“He had this house, but he always acted calm,” Barriger recalled.
“He would say things like, ‘Can I see your paintings? Do you need a business mentor?'” she added.
According to her police report, when Barriger visited the home alone, she felt uncomfortable after speaking with Leonard.
“Leonard said something like ‘humanity would not have evolved if rape were not an aspect of it,'” she said in the report.
As the three drank late into the night, Leonard soon invited her to stay in one of his guest rooms.
Around 2:30 a.m., Barriger said, Leonard mixed a pineapple-flavored cocktail for her and Harada.
Shortly after both women drank their drinks, Barriger said she began to feel like she was hallucinating and saw that Harada’s eyes “were dilated.”
“Victim 1 walked over to a mirror, looked at her eyes and saw that they were also dilated. Victim 1 confronted Leonard about drugging her, and Leonard denied all allegations,” the report said.
Harada soon fell asleep, when “Leonard escorted Victim 1 to the room where he offered her a place to sleep and attempted to seduce her,” the report said.
Barriger then attempted to “leave the situation,” but “Leonard pulled her onto the bed by her pants belt loops and attempted to kiss Victim 1,” the report said.
Barriger recalled having “that shark-in-the-water feeling” around Leonard, whom he described as “dangerous and very aggressive,” he said in an interview.
On November 11, 2021, Leonard and Harada invited her and her then-partner to their home for a meeting. Barriger recalled having “that shark-in-the-water feeling” around Leonard, whom she described as “dangerous and very aggressive.”
“I’m drunk and I can’t drive home. I got really stiff and thought, ‘How can I stop this as quickly as possible and get out of there?'”
After telling Leonard to stop, he eventually left, the report said.
The next day, Barriger visited High Desert Medical Center for an MDMA test, but was soon told by staff that she “would have to file a police report before she could receive treatment,” the Times reported.
At the time, Barriger said she was “not ready to file a complaint.”
“I didn’t know what to do and I was scared. There were two different versions of what I should do at that point. I was like, ‘Is it as bad as I think it is? Or am I overreacting?'” she told the outlet.
The report specified that Barriger “was not raped by Leonard,” but she “felt she was incapacitated by drugs and physically unable to leave Leonard’s residence.”
After the encounter, Barriger sent photographs of her dilated eyes to close friends and family, the Times reported.
Her sister told the Times that Barriger called her at 7 a.m. and told her that Leonard allegedly “tried to assault her and that she felt high and didn’t know how to leave the property.”
Barriger did not file a police report immediately after the alleged incident, but did so later.
“I thought I had done the right thing, but that contributed to a lot of loss in my life,” he told The Times.
Last year, after Dimes returned to Joshua Tree, he ran into Barringer’s then-partner at a local convenience store.
Last year, after Dimes returned to Joshua Tree, he ran into Barringer’s then-partner at a local convenience store and learned that both had filed complaints against Leonard. (pictured: File image from Joshua Tree, California)
It was then that she learned that both of them filed reports against Leonard, but after reaching out to the police department about the progress of their cases, the department informed them that they did not have the statements.
In April 2023, the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department suffered a cyberattack that prevented them from accessing police reports filed between April 2019 and April 2023, the Times reported.
According to the outlet, the county paid $1.1 million to a hacking group with Russian involvement to recover the data.
Their attorney, Christine Pelosi, daughter of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, has been fighting tirelessly for her clients.
“We’ve been stuck on this for a long time. We need some kind of justice,” Pelosi said.
DailyMail.com has reached out to Leonard, Harada and the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department for comment.
This isn’t the only legal drama Leonard has been embroiled in, as he currently faces seven criminal charges in Los Angeles stemming from a 2022 incident involving a fire at a Hollywood recording studio he owned, the Times reported.
Nathan Edwards, 26, died in the fire and musician Ozzy Osbourne’s daughter Aimee, who was recording there at the time, was injured.
