Cyndi Lauper’s troubled son has been hit with a sexual assault lawsuit by a former gal pal who claims he attacked her after inviting her over to his Manhattan apartment four years ago — leaving her feeling powerless and afraid, The Post has learned.
The legendary pop singer’s son Declyn “Dex” Lauper Thornton allegedly pressured the woman to give him oral sex and manhandled her, holding her down while shoving his penis in her face, according to the Manhattan federal lawsuit filed Tuesday.
“After the assault, that’s when I went into a panic,” the woman, who is bringing the suit anonymously as a Jane Doe, told The Post in an exclusive phone interview about the alleged Nov. 9, 2020, attack in Lauper Thornton’s Soho home.
“I felt like my life was really in danger at that point,” she said.
The suit adds to the legal troubles of Lauper Thornton, 26, who is separately being threatened with eviction from the $7,200-a-month Financial District apartment he moved into in October, and has prior arrests on theft and gun possession charges.
A working number couldn’t be found for Lauper Thornton. It wasn’t immediately clear if he had retained an attorney in the new civil matter.
The plaintiff, a 28-year-old insurance broker who lived in New York but has since moved out of state, is seeking unspecified damages for the “emotional and psychological damage” she experienced as a result of the “humiliating” attack, the court papers say.
She had been dating Lauper Thornton — the only son of music icon Cyndi and her “Law & Order” TV actor hubby David Thornton — on and off for roughly nine months beginning in February 2020, according to the suit.
The day of the alleged attack, Lauper Thornton sent her $60 on Cash App for her to take a private car from her place to his Thompson Street apartment, were he lived at the time, the court papers say.
When she arrived, Lauper Thornton “seemed agitated” and they “both soon disagreed about a sexual act” he allegedly wanted her to perform on him, according to the suit.
She told him she wanted to leave and didn’t feel comfortable. That’s when Lauper Thornton allegedly grabbed her cellphone, threatening to break it “if she did not perform fellatio on him,” the suit states.
Lauper Thornton allegedly pushed her onto his bed three times as she tried to leave his bedroom, before exposing his penis and holding her arms down, the lawsuit claims.
Doe “repeatedly told Mr. Lauper to let her get up because he was too strong, but he refused,” the suit charges.
He then “forcibly smother[ed] his genitals over Jane Doe’s mouth, as Jane Doe warned him that she would bite him” and placed her teeth there, the lawsuit states.
He then allegedly pushed down on her neck and head with his hands, using all of his body weight, causing “a pop sound from her neck and upper spine,” the suit states.
Lauper Thornton finally released the hold after the “pop sound,” according to the suit.
“You see, I told you not to do that,” he said, before calling her a “b—h” and a “n—a” and threatening that no one would believe her if she repeated what happened, the suit alleges.
Doe then grabbed Lauper Thornton’s cell as leverage so she could get her own phone back and the pair did an exchange of their devices in his kitchen, the court papers claim.
After the woman left and was standing in his building lobby, Lauper Thornton called her “saying that he was sorry for what he had just done to her,” the suit claims.
But she was “terrified in his presence” and never saw him again despite his efforts for the pair to meet up “several” more times, the court documents allege.
“It was the point of no return,” the woman told The Post of never wanting to see him again. “I’m not going to be able to look at this person the same.”
She said he tried calling her from different numbers asking to see her but she avoided any more encounters.
“Just talking to him was nerve-wracking,” she said.
“It’s definitely been a horrific experience for me,” she added. “Even still years later it feels just as traumatic as it was before.”
The woman — who didn’t file criminal charges — said she didn’t come forward sooner with her story because “I felt powerless at the time.”
“I think now I realize I deserve some sort of justice, whatever the outcome may be,” she said, adding, “there needs to be awareness brought to this” and that she hoped to prevent attacks on other women in the future.
“People may need to be warned about this guy,” she said.
Her lawyer Mark Shirian said: “This lawsuit seeks to hold Mr. Lauper accountable for the grievous harm inflicted upon our client.”
“Our client deserves to have her voice heard and to seek the justice she rightfully deserves.”
Lauper Thornton has made headlines this year, most recently in April when The Post reported his landlord had filed a lawsuit attempting to evict the music icon’s son from his luxury apartment in the Financial District, accusing him of being a neighbor from Hell who plays loud music, screams late into the night and whose unit stinks of weed.
Lauper Thornton was arrested in February when he was allegedly caught with a gun and drugs in the wake of a shooting in Harlem. That case — for which he’s been out on $200,000 bail — is pending.
He was also arrested in July 2022 after he allegedly double-parked a stolen Mercedes while he was attending the memorial for a 14-year-old aspiring rapper who was fatally stabbed. He copped a plea deal in that case and avoided jail time.
Lauper Thornton’s criminal attorney didn’t immediately return a request for comment Wednesday.
