'He knew my age': Horatio Sanz's accuser drags Jimmy Fallon into sordid underage sex scandal
A woman who accused Saturday Night Live alum Horatio Sanz of grooming and sexually assaulting her when she was a teenager has claimed that several crew members and castmates were aware of the abuse but did nothing to stop it. Among them was talk show host Jimmy Fallon.
Sanz's accuser, who hails from Pennsylvania and is only identified by the pseudonym 'Jane Doe', filed a complaint against the comedian in August 2021. According to her statement, he groped her breasts and touched her genitals in front of his colleagues during an SNL afterparty in 2002. The alleged victim, who was just 17 at the time, has spoken out in an explosive interview with The Daily Beast.
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The claims have been vehemently denied by Sanz's attorney Andrew Brettler, who called them "ludicrous" and "categorically false." Instead, Brettler accused Doe of trying to extract a multimillion-dollar settlement from his client. The complaint details her alleged history with Sanz and SNL, when Jane Doe was a teen superfan of Fallon when he was on the cast of the comedy show. Jane Doe said several NBC employees were aware of Sanz's conduct, which allegedly included public displays of affection and consuming alcohol with Doe at afterparties that were attended by castmates and other staffers.
"Horatio certainly is the main character here, but he didn’t abuse me in a vacuum; he abused me all over Saturday Night Live," the woman told The Daily Beast. She said she became part of SNL's online community when she was 15 and created a fan page dedicated to Fallon, who was her favorite cast member. According to Doe, Sanz and Fallon — who were pals and colleagues at the time — emailed her to thank her for her efforts.
This was followed by flirtatious chats between Sanz and the girl, who was half his age at the time. It wasn't long before Sanz invited Doe to SNL's afterparties and after-afterparties, where she claimed many SNL members observed her drinking alcohol and doing drugs despite her being underage at the time.
In her lawsuit, which names Sanz and NBC as defendants, Doe said the comedian would often pull her towards him and touch her buttocks in full view of his colleagues. The plaintiff said that Fallon was aware of her age and even helped her prepare for her Standardized Aptitude Tests or SATs. Doe alleged in her lawsuit that when she told Fallon she was in high school as the two were sharing a plate of calamari, the comedian said, "so you have a few years before you graduate." According to the accuser, the "people seated at the table became very quiet when Plaintiff disclosed she was a junior in high school." She said Fallon introduced her to Lorne Michaels, SNL's creator and producer, at the same event.
One of Doe's friends who attended a cast party in 2001 said she witnessed Doe sitting with Sanz and Fallon "like they were pals" and that Sanz was behaving like the teen's boyfriend. The friend said the pair appeared "cuddly" and had their arms around each other. Doe told the Daily Beast that she aspired to work at SNL and was trying to impress Sanz by trying to act older than her age. "I felt like I had been sort of groomed by Horatio into thinking that I was more mature than kids my age," she said. "It was such a disgusting, warped thing for him to do."
The woman's lawsuit alleged that in May 2002, she was invited to a late-night party at an unnamed SNL cast member's apartment, which was full of provocatively dressed women. Doe, then 17, recalled sitting with Sanz before he groped her breasts and touched her genitals in front of his castmates and NBC staffers, one of whom allegedly commented, "Are you f***ing serious?" The complaint alleged that Sanz digitally penetrated Doe over her pantyhose later that night. She recalled feeling confused and angry following the alleged sexual assault. When she confronted Sanz, she said he blamed her for the incident and later taunted her by saying Fallon "didn't care if she was a slut."
Doe said she shut down her fan page dedicated to Fallon just days after that comment. She told the Daily Beast that the most unsettling part for her was that Fallon did nothing to intervene despite witnessing her and Sanz's interactions. "I don’t know how much of our conversations happened when he was in his office at NBC, which he shared with Jimmy Fallon… but I know that I deserve to know," she told the publication.