A woman has sued author and venture capitalist Amy Griffin over her bestselling 2025 memoir The Tell, saying that Griffin's descriptions of childhood sexual abuse in the book were stolen from her experience. The plaintiff IDs herself as Jane Doe in the lawsuit filed Wednesday in Los Angeles Superior Court. An attorney for Griffin called the suit "absurd" and "meritless," per the AP. In The Tell, published a year ago, Griffin writes that undergoing therapy using the psychedelic drug MDMA uncovered previously buried childhood memories of being sexually abused by a teacher at her middle school in Amarillo, Texas, in the 1980s.
The memoir was an Oprah's Book Club selection and was also touted by Reese Witherspoon and Gwyneth Paltrow. In the suit, the plaintiff says the descriptions match her own sexual assaults by a different teacher at a school dance and in a school bathroom. The suit says Griffin had reason to know about the abuse. "The Tell constitutes neither a genuine nor harmless memoir," the complaint says, alleging Griffin engaged in intrusion, invasion of privacy, publication of private facts, negligence, and infliction of emotional distress. It seeks damages to be determined at trial.
The suit says the plaintiff met with Griffin for the first time in decades in California in 2019, a meeting recounted in the book. But the woman said she didn't discuss her sexual assaults. The plaintiff says she did describe the abuse in detail to a talent agent who called her later about her life story. Per the suit, the agent told the plaintiff he'd learned about her and her stories through an unidentified third party. The lawsuit says the agent stopped contact when she began asking him too many probing questions, and that details from the conversations "found their way into The Tell."
The lawsuit also names Griffin's publishers and a ghostwriter as defendants. The New York Times published a story in September raising questions about the book. It included people who expressed doubts about the reliability of the memories. The story also pointed out financial ties between Griffin and the prominent people who helped promote the book. The plaintiff first learned of the existence of the memoir when the Times reached out to her during its reporting. Griffin's attorney said in an email: "We look forward to exposing these meritless claims in court, as well as the deeply flawed New York Times reporting that is at the center of it." A Times rep said in response: "We're confident in the accuracy of our reporting."
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