Raquel Leviss blamed her former Vanderpump Rules costar Ariana Madix for playing a role in her experiencing severe emotional distress — and slammed Ariana’s effort to escape her invasion of privacy lawsuit, In Touch has exclusively learned.
In Touch obtained the emotional declaration Raquel, 29, filed as part of her ongoing lawsuit against her former costars, Ariana, 39, and Tom Sandoval.
In the shocking suit, Raquel admitted she had an affair with Tom, 39, while he was in a long-term relationship with Ariana. She accused Tom of secretly recording explicit FaceTime calls they had. Ariana found the sexually charged clips on Tom’s phone which led to their breakup.
Raquel accused Ariana of sharing the videos with third parties to humiliate her.
Tom slammed the lawsuit. He denied all allegations of wrongdoing and accused his ex-fling of bringing the lawsuit to extend her five minutes of fame.
Last month, a judge shut down Tom’s motion and allowed the claims against him to proceed. Ariana demanded all claims against her be thrown out.
She denied having shared the video with anyone. She said she found the videos on Tom’s phone and watched them alone in a bathroom. “I did not send the videos to anyone else. Nor did I share, display, or show the videos to anyone else,” Ariana said in a declaration filed in the case. “To be clear, I only saw the video of [Raquel] masturbating in places secluded from others.”
As In Touch first reported, Raquel’s legal team slammed Ariana’s attempt to escape the lawsuit. “Although Madix attempts to recast the lawsuit as an attack on her right to speak freely on matters of public concern, it is no such thing. Madix does not have a free speech right to break into the phone of her boyfriend and siphon away nonconsensual pornographic materials. Nor does she have a legal right to disseminate such material to menace and terrorize,” Raquel’s powerhouse lawyers, Mark Geragos and Bryan Freedman, argued.
Raquel filed her declaration detailing her side of things. She explained she made her first appearance on Vanderpump Rules in 2016 due to her relationship with another cast member, James Kennedy. Raquel said after her breakup, she became increasingly isolated.
She said, “I began to confide in Sandoval, who had been in a relationship with Madix since 2014 and lived with her in Valley Village, California. Over time, we became increasingly close, and I began to rely on him for emotional support; he, in turn, began to confide in me about the dire state of his relationship with Madix, describing it as a business partnership and casting its end as foregone. I viewed Sandoval as a close confidante and friend and our relationship as platonic. It became increasingly clear, however, that Sandoval had different intentions.”
“By the Summer of 2022, Sandoval had worn down my defenses. We started sleeping together in August and continued doing so through the early months of 2023. Our sexual encounters were not filmed or recorded as part of Vanderpump Rules and did not take place in the presence of any other person,” she said.
“During this time, Sandoval and I regularly communicated privately, in real-time via videoconference on Facetime, and sometimes sexually. All of these communications were confidential, and I had every reason to believe they would remain confidential. Sandoval never asked my permission to record them, and I was not aware he was doing so. Had he asked, I would have said no. If I had known he had done so anyway, I would have been furious and demanded he delete them. Under no circumstances would I have consented to being recorded naked.”
Raquel detailed Ariana texting her she was “DEAD” to her after finding the videos.
She continued, “From the tone and tenor of Madix’s messages, it was clear that she was furiously angry. Given the circumstances, I was not surprised at her anger, but I was extremely alarmed and fearful about her intentions given the course of conduct she had evidently embarked on”
Raquel said, “It is not just that Madix had discovered the recordings and confronted me about their contents. If that were all that happened, Madix would not have been named in this lawsuit. But that is not all that happened. In her own sworn testimony, Madix acknowledges that she stole and disseminated them. She distributed the recordings from their original source on Sandoval’s phone to herself and to me at a minimum.”
The Vanderpump Rules alum said, “From the time of Madix’s disclosure, I had been battling dark and disturbing thoughts. My mental health was in absolute shambles, and I knew that I needed urgent psychological help.” She said she entered a three-month program at a mental health facility which cost $115,000.
She added, “Madix’s implication that my mental health struggles were brief in duration or minor could not be further from the truth. I was in a state of extreme distress as a result of the events described in the lawsuit, and I entered treatment in an extremely dark and scary place mentally. My symptoms included severe emotional distress, physical manifestations of such distress, anxiety, shock, embarrassment, loss of self-esteem, disgrace, humiliation, powerless, sleeplessness, nightmares, and loss of enjoyment of life.”
“While I have come a long way since March 2023, my recovery remains very much a work in progress,” she said in the declaration dated June 27. “I can state unequivocally that Madix’s actions, as described above, were a principal contributor to the severity of my emotional distress. The urgency and breadth of my need for treatment were necessitated, in particular, by Madix’s theft, dissemination, and continued possession of the illicit materials.”
A judge has yet to rule on Ariana’s motion.
