Four stars of Riverdale have been accused of sexual assault by anonymous Twitter accounts.
Cole Sprouse, Lili Reinhart, KJ Apa, and Vanessa Morgan, who portray Jughead Jones, Betty Cooper, Archie Andrews, and Toni Topaz, respectively in The CW series, faced the allegations on the social media website.
These actresses walked out of an awards ceremony after a director accused of assault won three awards:Four tweets accusing Sprouse of assault at a 2013 party were posted by an account with the handle @Victori66680029, and this was accompanied by other anonymous pages making accusations against his three co-stars, per the Metro.
In the accusations made by the anonymous account, Sprouse was accused of various unwanted sexual acts including fondling the woman's breasts, despite her telling him to stop.
But despite these accusations, one of the accounts later posted to admit they were false, writing: "Do you see how easy it is to lie and you guys will believe it? Vanessa Morgan and Kj Apa didn't do jack s**t. You will believe anything."
Sprouse subsequently took to Twitter to deny the accusations made against himself and his costars.
"Earlier today myself and three other castmates were falsely accused of sexual offense by anonymous accounts on twitter. I take these accusations very seriously, and will be working with the right teams to get to the root of it," the 27-year-old wrote.
"False accusations do tremendous damage to victims of actual assault. Furthermore, I would never seek to silence anybody...This seems to be the latest claim in a series of incidents seeking to baselessly cancel my castmates and me," the Friends alum added.
Reinhart, who reportedly recently broke up Sprouse, quoted his tweet on her account and added: "I have always taken sexual assault allegations seriously. But it was proven that this account was created specifically to create false stories about me and my cast."
The 23-year-old wrote that the accusations were sickening as they invalidate genuine survivors of abuse.
"This kind of lie can ruin lives and careers- and I can call it a lie because the person who made the allegations already admitted that the stories were fabricated," she wrote.
The actress added that they would be looking to take legal action against their accuses as "this kind of sick behavior only harms true survivors."
"This was incredibly triggering for me and scary because I've always supported survivors and believed them. I hope and pray that this does not discourage real survivors from speaking out about their experiences," Reinhart added.
