A third woman has come forward to accuse former Gossip Girl star Ed Westwick of sexual assault, after the actor was separately accused by two women of rape this month.
In an interview with Buzzfeed News this week, Rachel Eck — a 23-year-old executive assistant at the time of the alleged incident — claimed the actor sexually assaulted her at a Los Angeles-area hotel in 2004 on the night before the Academy Awards.
Eck told the outlet that she had been hanging out with Westwick and her ex-boyfriend, film producer Kaine Harling, inside a suite at the Sunset Marquis in West Hollywood. Eck alleged that Westwick repeatedly tried to kiss her over a period of hours, but she rebuffed his advances.
Finally, when she was told by Harling that Westwick wanted to apologize to her, she went into a bedroom, where the actor was waiting for her.
“Ed then pulled me onto the bed and aggressively groped me,” she told the outlet. “I shoved him off as quickly as I could and left.”
Eck added that she “never felt so uncomfortable in a situation like that” in her entire life.
Eck becomes the third woman to accuse Westwick of sexual misconduct this month. Two other women — actresses Kristina Cohen and Aurelie Wynn — have accused the actor of rape.
“I was woken up abruptly by Ed on top of me, his fingers entering my body. I told him to stop, but he was strong,” Cohen wrote on Facebook. “I fought him off as hard as I could but he grabbed my face in his hands, shaking me, telling me he wanted to f*ck me. I was paralyzed, terrified. I couldn’t speak, I could no longer move. He held me down and raped me.”
Meanwhile, Wynn alleged that Westwick pushed her “face down,” with her eventually becoming “powerless under his weight.”
The actor, who played Chuck Bass on Gossip Girl for six seasons, did not immediately comment publicly on the third woman’s claims. In a social media post following the second rape accusation, Westwick called the claims “unverified and provably untrue.”
“I have absolutely not, and I am cooperating with the authorities so that they can clear my name as soon as possible,” he added.
Follow Daniel Nussbaum on Twitter: @dznussbaum
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