Current Events > GoT actor Joseph Gatt had his career ruined by a false accuser he never even met

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Game of Thrones actor Joseph Gatt has spoken out for the first time of his relief after a judge threw out the sexual contact case brought against him by an 'obsessed' 16-year-old fan.

But, in an exclusive interview with DailyMail.com, he says his career as an actor has been destroyed by the allegationsand he can no longer find work.

'This has been a horrific experience for almost two years it ruined my life, said the 52-year-old who played Thenn Warg on GoT.

My agent fired me the next day without even speaking to me, said British actor Gatt, who has lived in the U.S. for more than two decades.

I was fired from the Rebel Moon movie that I had already started work on. Offers stopped coming in. After 35 years, my career was ruined.

People hear an allegation and say, Oh, he must be guilty There is not even any discussion. Innocent till proven guilty does not exist any more.

Charges against Gatt were dismissed on Friday by LA Superior Court Judge M.L. Villar after it was revealed that forensic technologist Jeff Fischbach could show that the girl 'LT' had made up the story of abuse.

Armed with 180 slides of Instagram and SnapChat texts and photos, Fischbach and Gatt's attorney Dana Cole huddled with Deputy District Attorney Michael Fern before the hearing was due to start.

Fern then asked Judge Villar to dismiss the case 'without prejudice' which means prosecutors could re-file the same charge against him in the future.

Gatt who wore a dark gray pinstriped suit and open-neck white shirt in court Friday has protested his innocence ever since his arrest in April 2022.

Attorney Cole told the judge: Mr Gatt is an actor and this case has had a devastating effect on his career, financially and emotionally.

This was manufactured evidence by a purported victim. Her so-called personal conversations show an extremely troubled young lady who fantasized about Mr. Gatt.

Who is the victim here? Is it the alleged victim or is it Mr. Gatt?' asked Cole. 'His career has been destroyed and its not right.

Judge Villar had been due to decide whether there was a case against Gatt on charges of contact with a minor for sexual offense and possessing an assault gun.

The alleged teenage victim was not in court.

After the hearing, Gatt told DailyMail.com that his nightmare was sparked innocently two years ago when a relative of LT whom Gatt didnt know paid to have the actor record a video birthday greeting for her via Cameo, a company that sells personalized greetings from celebrities.

What he didnt know at the time, he said, was that this girl was already obsessed with my character on Z Nation' a TV show that ran from 2014 to 2018 in which he played The Man.

She was already sharing pictures and texts about me with her friends, completely unbeknown to me,' Gatt said. 'She would say in texts supposedly to me, I want you to be my daddy".

She even had nude pictures of me on her phone from the TV show Banshee,' a 2013-16 series that ran from 2013-2016.

And she was telling her friends and sharing fake Instagrams and Snapchat conversations with me, some of them very sexual, which she totally made up.

We have absolute proof that she manufactured all this stuff about me. And weve never heard from the supposed victim.

A relative of LT concerned about the postings and photos the teenager claimed were from Gatt contacted LA police.

In April 2022, at the LA home he shares with his girlfriend, actress and writer Mercy Malick, 51, a SWAT team turned up at 4.30 in the morning with guns, dragged us out of bed, and searched the house, he said.

They searched my computer and my phone but they found nothing on them. They illegally seized my AR15 gun which is licensed and completely legal.

The police were relying completely on this girls accusations about me which were all made up. But the DA wont admit that these supposed internet conversations were all manufactured.

While Gatt is pleased with Fridays dismissal, he feels he has been robbed of the chance to completely exonerate myself because of the decision to dismiss the case without prejudice.

Im a little disappointed because Im innocent and I want to be able to tell the world that and rebuild my life.

Yet I still have to worry that one day they could come back and arrest me again for something I never did, that was totally made up.

Some people will still say, He got off but he still did it.

'If it had been dismissed with prejudice it would have mean the DA couldnt re-file the charge against me and I could share with the world the 7,000 pages of documents we have that prove Im innocent.

But the DA doesnt want us to do that because they know it would be very embarrassing publicly for them and make them have to admit that they did not do a good job and should never have brought this case in the first place.

With the dismissal without prejudice, they get to hold it over my head, like a threat that they could bring the case again so I shouldnt share all this material I have that shows the evidence against me was manufactured. The DA is trying to prevent us from releasing it.

Cole said, If you are a celebrity in LA, all you have to do is use the internet and evidence against you can be manufactured.

Its easy to create fake conversations and pictures and it puts celebrities at a real risk of having their careers destroyed.

Long-time girlfriend Malick whom Gatt hugged and thanked for sticking by me through all this added, Its not just celebrities. Nobody is safe.

In an email to DailyMail.com the actress and writer accused the LA DA of malicious prosecution and prosecutorial misconduct, the LA police of search and seizure violations and the purported victim of falsifying evidence.

One of Gatt's most high-profile roles was playing Thenn Warg on the hugely popular HBO series Game Of Thrones.

His character was a member of the Thenn, a tribe of Free Folk known for their practices of ritual self-scarring and cannibalism.

After appearing in several episodes during season four in 2014, his character was killed off in the Battle of Castle Black

Gatt has also starred in several blockbuster movies including the live-action Disney remake Dumbo, Star Trek Into Darkness and Thor.

The bald-headed actor who has a condition called alopecia universalis which caused him to lose all his hair at the age of 14 began his acting career with an appearance on the British police drama The Bill in 1999.

Another isolated incident

Innocent until proven guilty has really become a thing of the past and the court of public opinion is stronger than ever.

Another isolated incident

Another isolated incident

Too bad they didn't slap the shit out of the fuck wit teen who levied these allegations. Provably false allegations should come with "fuck your life" prison sentences.

wtf kind of comment is this?

what a shit fucking post, dude

This one seems to be on the police and prosecution who pursued the case despite little or no evidence.

I don't think 16 year olds who make up stories about having a relationship with a celebrity should be brutally beaten. (By who? Are we now suggesting that agents of the state should be sanctioned to violently assault those who commit crime? Do we maybe want to think about how that plays out?).

This one seems to be on the police and prosecution who pursued the case despite little or no evidence.

I don't think 16 year olds who make up stories about having a relationship with a celebrity should be brutally beaten. (By who? Are we now suggesting that agents of the state should be sanctioned to violently assault those who commit crime? Do we maybe want to think about how that plays out?).

Some people will still say, He got off but he still did it.

Innocent until proven guilty has really become a thing of the past and the court of public opinion is stronger than ever.

Sure are a lot of them, eh?

wtf kind of comment is this?

what a shit fucking post, dude

A good start would be to stop letting the media cover cases. We dont live in a small village of 50 people where they all attend the trial and you have to look the people you wronged in the eye. We live in cities with millions of people, some of whom could be your employers, and the vast majority of whom have nothing to do with you and thus no business knowing.

Same with criminal records - unless someone can demonstrate a legitimate reason to screen your history, they shouldnt be allowed to demand a police clearance. It should be against privacy legislation to even ask and considered a case of unlawful discrimination.

People demand body cam footage, CCTV, autopsy reports, life-ruining sentences, and sometimes prison torture/beatings based solely on initial media reports of crimes these days.

Anonymity for the accused won't sit well in that climate.

Yeah, too many people are authoritarian when it comes to law enforcement (youll usually find theyre also like that toward parenting, school, etc.)

A good start would be to stop letting the media cover cases. We dont live in a small village of 50 people where they all attend the trial and you have to look the people you wronged in the eye. We live in cities with millions of people, some of whom could be your employers, and the vast majority of whom have nothing to do with you and thus no business knowing.

Am I the only one who read his post and assumed it was sarcastic? Isolated incident #32768 is what we used to say whenever a Trump supporter shot up a school after posting their intent to do so on social media.

Its lame that everyone fired him before he even had his trial

Oh no, a 16-year old child doing stupid things like that is one thing.

But as soon as that "fan" saw what kind of trouble it created for their "idol", she should have come clean ASAP.

Maybe she did? The police never seemed to include her in their case and the actor never heard from her. Didn't seem like they had a case other than a single witness.

So what were they doing and why did they keep going? If they went this far with this little I don't think it's out of the question they would disregard anything said from the fan herself.

DailyMail.com

In this case, anger should be directed at the police and prosecution.

Gotta love it when people want false accusers to be punished worse than most other criminals. Fucking pathetic, make it even harder for people to come forward

The anger should be directed at the 16 year old as well

Because they made up a disturbed fantasy about an actor they were obsessed with? They didn't go to the police. That was a relative who stumbled on the material and thought they should report it (which was the right thing for them to do).

It doesn't matter she didn't personally go to the police. She still went around telling other people a lie, who took her accusations seriously and went to the police.

This isn't a fucking 5 year old who didn't know any better.

Another isolated incident

So how heavily should we punish teenagers who lie about their romantic lives? Who get caught up in fantasy and can't see a way out?

I've seen 'fuck up their life' and 'sued into poverty' suggested so far. Any advance?

Am I the only one who read his post and assumed it was sarcastic? Isolated incident #32768 is what we used to say whenever a Trump supporter shot up a school after posting their intent to do so on social media.

Is it bad that I am questioning this guy because he went to the daily mail?

In this case, anger should be directed at the police and prosecution.

A 16 year old manufactured a false fantasy about her life with a celebrity she was obsessed with. That's disturbing behaviour.

A relative saw the material, had no reason to think it was false, and referred the matter to the police. This seems reasonable to me. The relative isn't in a position to investigate.

The police and prosecution did not do their job properly, and failed to establish that it was all lies. They could, and should, have carried out the same tests on the 'evidence' that the defence did, and it should not have gone to court.

This isn't someone going to the police or the media with an accusation they know to be false. This is incompetent police and prosecutors not bothering to establish the facts of the case before ruining the man's career. Once the ball started rolling on this, the disturbed 16 year old would have been in a position where they would have been too frightened to back down. It is the experienced investigators who should have taken the lead and the responsibility.

Gotta love it when people want false accusers to be punished worse than most other criminals. Fucking pathetic, make it even harder for people to come forward

1. If he actually did it, he'd get punished far worse than what people have suggested for the accuser, and that's just in court and not counting socially/career.
2. It's the false accusers making it harder for actual victims to come forward if anything, STOP VICTIM BLAMING.
3. Just as a court has to prove the accused guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, so to would they have to prove that the false accuser lied (maliciously) to throw her in jail, so actual victims won't have a paper trail to hang themselves with anyway.

But, as usual, people don't want to address systematic, societal, or institutional issues (of which they are a part), when they can point a finger at an individual and say 'that's who's responsible! Burn the witch!'.