'How to Get Away With Murder' star says she was raped by director in Mexico

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Thursday, February 22, 2018
'How to Get Away With Murder' star says she was raped by director
Actress Karla Souza, a star on the ABC's "How to Get Away With Murder," has gone public with sexual assault allegations against a Mexican producer/director that she did not name.

Actress Karla Souza, a star on the ABC's "How to Get Away With Murder," has gone public with sexual assault allegations against a Mexican producer/director that she did not name. But shortly after her revelation, Mexico's largest TV network, Televisa, announced it was cutting all ties with Gustavo Loza.

Souza said she was groomed, pressured, groped and eventually raped early in her career. Souza appeared in a 2010 series called "Heroes of the North," which was produced by Loza. She also appeared in "Don't Blame the Kid" in 2016, a box office hit in Mexico directed by Loza.

"He started to humiliate me in front of others," Souza told CNN Espanol during an interview. She described how she was given a room at the same hotel as the director while the rest of the cast stayed elsewhere. The director would repeatedly show up at her door in the middle of the night claiming he needed to talk about the shoot.

Souza said he was charming, flirtatious, and pushy, but when she failed to answer the door, Souza said he would humiliate her in front of the cast the next day. Souza said it was during one of those late-night visits that she was raped.

"Yes, he raped me," she told CNN Espanol during that same interview, "That's hard for me to say."

Loza took to Twitter to defend himself. He denied the allegations, saying he was accused without basis, and condemned the alleged rape.

In a separate statement Loza wrote, "Televisa cannot take on the role of investigator, prosecutor, and much less judge, condemning me in the media, above all when the victim has never mentioned my name."

Loza went on to write, "I respectfully ask her to clear this situation up in the news media, by mentioning the name or names of her attackers and file charges against them, so that these regrettable and lamentable acts she suffered will not go unpunished."