It’s been one year since Ariana Madix discovered Tom Sandoval and Rachel “Raquel” Leviss‘ affair — but there is still no end in sight when it comes to the Scandoval drama. In a new bombshell lawsuit filed by Leviss, she is accusing both Sandoval and Madix of eavesdropping, revenge porn and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
In March 2023, Madix uncovered a sexually explicit recording of Leviss on Sandoval’s phone, exposing a months-long affair and prompting her to end their nine-year relationship. While Leviss claims in the 19-page suit that she apologized for her mistake “multiple times,” she says there is more to the story that got “lost in the mix.”
“Leviss was a victim of the predatory and dishonest behavior of an older man, who recorded sexually explicit videos of her without her knowledge or consent, which were then distributed, disseminated, and discussed publicly by a scorned women seeking vengeance, catalyzing the scandal,” the complaint reads, per Deadline.
Leviss is seeking unspecified damages, while also requesting all copies of the video be destroyed and an injunction prohibit anyone from ever seeing the video again, the outlet reports.
Bravo and Evolution Media are not named as defendants, though Leviss accuses the companies of joining the Vanderpump Rules cast in “[milking] the interest her excoriation had peaked” as Scandoval gained national attention.
“Fomented by Bravo and Evolution in conjunction with the cast, Leviss was subjected to a public skewering with little precedent and became, without exaggeration, one of the most hated women in America,” the suit alleges.
The former reality star, who spent three months in a mental health facility after getting eviscerated by her castmates at the Season 10 reunion, also claims she was “misled” by both Bravo and Evolution into thinking she was “contractually barred from speaking out about her mistreatment.”
The suit continues, “As a result, she suffered in silence as Bravo and Evolution watched viewership explode, and the rest of the cast enjoyed unseen levels of public recognition and professional opportunity.”
Noting that she was “humiliated and villainized for public consumption,” Leviss goes on to claim that she’s a “shell of her former self, with her career prospects stunted and her reputation in tatters.”
For those who have been following the Scandoval drama from the beginning, Leviss’ lawsuit doesn’t come as much of a surprise.
Shortly after the scandal broke last year, Leviss’ lawyers sent her former castmates a legal letter claiming the NSFW FaceTime call was recorded “illegally without Raquel’s knowledge or consent.” The letter demanded that anyone in possession of the video delete it from their phones and “any other manner or method in which the recording may exist” to avoid violating a California revenge porn law, which makes it a “crime to invade someone’s privacy” and spread around “non-consensual pornography.”
Decider has reached out to reps for Madix and Sandoval, but did not hear back by the time of publication.