Left inset: Dr. Dre attends a ceremony honoring him with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on Tuesday, March 19, 2024, in Los Angeles (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP). Right: Dr. Charles Sophy speaks with TMZ in 2020 (TMZ/YouTube).
Grammy award-winning musician Dr. Dre will no longer be required to stay away from the prominent “celebrity shrink” who sought a permanent restraining order against the music mogul after counseling him and his ex-wife during their divorce proceedings.
A California judge on Tuesday ruled that Dr. Charles Sophy failed to provide sufficient evidence that the rapper, whose real name is Andre Young, posed a legitimate threat to the psychotherapist’s safety.
Sophy, the former Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services medical director and well-known TV commentator, filed a $10 million lawsuit against Young in October alleging that the former NWA rapper engaged in a pattern of harassment against Sophy, including threats of physical violence.
In filing the initial lawsuit, Sophy also included an application for a temporary restraining order which prohibited Young from contacting Sophy in any way — one which he then sought to make permanent.
But Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Melanie Ochoa on Tuesday rejected Sophy’s request for a permanent restraining order.
“The court finds the party requesting the order of protection did not sustain the applicable burden of proof and accordingly the request is denied,” Los Angeles County Judge Melanie Ochoa wrote, according to a report from Rolling Stone. “Any temporary restraining order earlier issued is hereby dissolved.”
The magazine reported that Sophy appeared in person for Tuesday’s hearing while Young testified remotely before Ochoa ultimately ruled to dissolve the temporary restraining order against Young.
As Law&Crime previously reported, Sophy, starting in 2018 and ending in 2021, worked as a mediator and marriage counselor for Young and his ex-wife, Nicole Young, while the two were heading for divorce. However, about 14 months after a divorce settlement was reached, Sophy alleged that he began receiving “threatening” texts from Young, who allegedly told the therapist he was “going to have to pay for that” and that he “f—ed with the wrong one.”
In previous court filings, Young asserted that Sophy’s suit amounted to “desperate” retaliation against Young because the rapper filed a complaint with the state medical board about the doctor in which he alleged that Sophy had been “encouraging one of [Young’s] children to take sides against [Young]” amid the divorce, “even encouraging his son to go to the press with false allegations in order to force a financial settlement that he recommended.”
Young addressed those issues in a statement filed with the court on Monday, Rolling Stone reported.
“In 2023, I discovered that Sophy had attempted to poison my relationship with my son, including by urging him to disclose my financial records to the media as part of his attempts to pressure me into settling my divorce on unfair terms,” the statement read. “The text messages from 2023 that Sophy attaches to his TRO petition were sent in the context of my discovery of his malpractice and my unsuccessful attempts to have Sophy explain to me why he was undertaking these inappropriate actions.”
Sophy’s filings argued that any allegations claiming he acted improperly in the course of the mediation were “baseless,” “far-fetched” and objectively false.
In another Monday filing, Young reportedly asserted that the basis for Sophy’s claim that he feared for his safety consisted “entirely of invoking the racist caricature that depicts Black men, like [Dre], as inherently violent,” including Sophy mentioning “recent events involving P. Diddy” in a Sept. 30 police report.
“Sophy inexplicably links [Young] to P. Diddy — another Black man — and implies that [Young’s] friends, many of whom are prominent Black men, behave ‘violently’ without any evidence of violence to Sophy or anyone else,” Young’s attorney wrote.
Sophy pushed back against allegations of racism, testifying that such claims were false because for the last 20 years he’s operated a child welfare program for kids of all races, TMZ reported.
Following the hearing, Sophy’s attorney, Christopher Frost, provided the following statement to Rolling Stone:
“Today we watched a visibly rattled Andre Young claim that he believed Dr. Charles Sophy was still his psychiatrist when Mr. Young sent him threatening and abusive texts. We watched his counsel threaten Dr. Sophy’s career and life’s work. Mr. Young made the bare minimum appearance (by Zoom) required to support a filing that hurled ugly and unfair claims of racism at my client. We have always been aware that we are up against a celebrity in this matter and, while it might be easy to make those charged and disingenuous claims and amplify them, it does not change the fact that Dr. Sophy has pursued legal action solely because of Mr. Young’s consistent pattern of behavior. Dr. Sophy’s fear for his safety and the damages he has suffered are very real, more so now that the temporary relief of the TRO has lifted. We will continue to vigorously pursue the lawsuit against Mr. Young, which was not impacted by today’s ruling.”
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