More than 20 years have passed, but Gloria Trevi is once again facing a scandal. In January 2000, the well-known singer was arrested in Brazil for setting up a sex cult involving minors together with her producer and then-partner, Sergio Andrade.
After spending four years in custody during a judicial process featuring the resignation of two judges from the case without explanation, she was ultimately released. The singer was cleared of the charges after it was deemed that there was no conclusive evidence against her. Trevi defended her innocence and assured that she was also a victim. She explained in her own words at the 2018 Latin American Music Awards gala:
I was not complicit. I was 15 years old, with a mindset of 12, when I met a big producer. He immediately sought to become a mirage of love and pretended to be my only chance to reach my dreams. I was 15 years old when I began to live with manipulation, beatings, screaming, abuse, punishment. And it was 17 years of humiliations.
Sergio Andrade, on the other hand, was found guilty. As Rolling Stone recalls, he was convicted of rape, kidnapping and corruption of minors. However, after having spent four years in pretrial detention awaiting trial, he only had to serve an additional year in jail.
Case reopened
Decades later, thanks to two alleged victims who have chosen to remain anonymous, the singer is once again in the legal spotlight. Rolling Stone reports that in the lawsuit filed by the victims, they claim that Trevi did participate in the sex cult network and that she encouraged them to join it:
[Trevi and Andrade] used their role, status and power as a well-known and successful Mexican pop star and a famous producer to gain access to, groom, manipulate and exploit [the victims] and coerce sexual contact with them over a course of years.
Neither Gloria Trevi nor Sergio Andrade's name is directly mentioned in the lawsuit, but it is clear that they are indeed the intended defendants based on several details mentioned in the brief, such as concerts performed in the 1990s or the recording of several albums.
According to the victims, who became involved when they were 13 and 15 years old, respectively, it was Gloria Trevi who approached them in public and invited them to join an alleged music training program created by Andrade. She assured them that it was a great occasion to become stars. However, according to the lawsuit, in the end it was all a strategy for Trevi to prepare them to become Andrade's sex slaves.
Why now?
The plaintiffs filed suit at the eleventh hour, on Dec. 30, 2022, under the California Child Victims Act. Only one day later, on Dec. 31, the statute of limitations would have expired for Andrade and Trevi, according to the victims’ attorneys Karen Barth Menzies, Ari Wilkenfeld, Laura Nagel and Caroline Whitlock. It was they who claimed that this date was chosen to file the lawsuit because a "lookback window" was opened that gave them three years when the statute of limitations on child assault complaints in California was temporarily lifted.
Trevi responds
The Mexican singer has already reacted to the reopening of the case. She did so through a video she shared on her Instagram account, in which she announced that she was in Madrid and that in 2023 she will give several concerts in Mexico and other places in the Americas. She also assured that she will "fight against anything."
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