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).
A prominent Beverly Hills, California, psychiatrist and “celebrity shrink” has filed a harassment lawsuit against Andre Young, better known as Dr. Dre, claiming the rapper lashed out at the marriage counselor and subjected him to a “barrage of threats” — even an intimidating visit at home from fake feds.
Dr. Charles Sophy, the former Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services medical director and well-known TV commentator, filed his $10 million suit Wednesday in LA.
The lawsuit alleges that Sophy, starting in 2018 and ending in 2021, worked as a mediator and marriage counselor for the rapper and his ex-wife Nicole Young while the two were heading for divorce. Some 14 months after a divorce settlement, however, Sophy alleges he began receiving what he called “threatening” texts from Dre that he was “going to have to pay for that” and that he “f—ed with the wrong one.”
According to Rolling Stone, Sophy accused Dre of threatening to go after his medical license for claimed “ethical breaches.”
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An attorney for Dre reportedly said that Sophy’s suit amounts to “desperate” retaliation because the rapper complained to a state medical board about the psychiatrist “encouraging one of [the Youngs’] children to take sides against Mr. 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.”
Sophy’s suit, on the other hand, reportedly said it is “baseless,” “far-fetched” and untrue that he acted improperly in the course of the mediation. Rather, the plaintiff said, it is Dre who is in the wrong.
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Claiming that he now “lives in constant fear” and “wears a bulletproof vest anytime he steps foot outside,” Sophy reportedly alleged that after he received threatening texts from Dre fake FBI agents showed up looking to speak with him at his home.
Sophy’s attorney Christopher Frost told Billboard that Dre “decided to take his frustrations about the mediation out on Dr. Sophy[.]”
Those “frustrations,” the lawyers reportedly said, “manifested themselves in the form of a nearly year-long sustained campaign of late-night texts, threats of intimidation and violence, and homophobic rhetoric.”
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