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The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives star Demi Engemann has requested that Marciano Brunette’s defamation lawsuit against her be dismissed.
According to court documents obtained by Us Weekly on Tuesday, February 17, Engemann, 31, asked the judge to throw out Marciano’s lawsuit, claiming that Brunette, 33, was punishing her “for exercising her First Amendment right to speak out concerning [Brunette’s] misconduct.”
Engemann, who called the lawsuit a “sham,” alleged that Brunette previously bragged about how his workplaces made a “special policy prohibiting him from sleeping with other employees” because he allegedly “slept with an ‘extraordinary’ number of employees.”
Engemann also requested Brunette’s to pay her attorneys’ fees and costs.
TMZ was first to report.
Us Weekly has reached out to Engemann and Brunette for comment.
Engemann and Brunette first connected in 2024 when the Mormon Wives cast traveled to Italy to appear on season 2 of Vanderpump Villa. Brunette claimed that he shared a consensual kiss with Demi, who is married to husband Bret Engemann. Demi, for her part, accused Brunette of crossing the line in May 2025.
“I did come out with a pretty bold and true statement against Marciano [recently] because at that point it was like, ‘You’re lying about me. Actually, you were the predator.’ So I’m not going to stay quiet — and I stand by that statement,” she exclusively told Us Weekly in May 2025. “There’s more happening behind the scenes that will come to light. I’m sure at this point it’s become a legal matter. There’s not much more I can say on it as of now because I want to preserve the fact that it’s a serious situation. But I stand behind those statements.”
Later that year, Demi claimed during a Secret Lives of Mormon Wives’ season 3 confessional that any physicality between her and Brunette was “unwanted.”
“Everyone is going to handle these kinds of situations different. You never deserve unwanted touch,” Demi said in the November 2025 episode. “No matter what it looks like, no matter what your relationship was like before or after, unwanted touch is unwanted touch.”
Following the episode, Brunette denied Demi’s accusations.
“It is unfortunate to see everything that is going on now, because everything that happened [on Vanderpump Villa] was consensual,” Brunette claimed on a November 2025 episode of the “Juicy Scoop” podcast. “I will just flat-out say that the accusations she’s making against me are 100 percent false.”
The following month, Brunette sued Demi for defamation. According to documents obtained by Us at the time, Brunette alleged that Demi falsely described him as a “sexual predator.”
“The truth is straightforward. Engemann and Marciano met while filming in Italy. They flirted. They spoke privately. They shared a consensual kiss. They separated,” Marciano’s legal team said per the docs. “After filming, Engemann stayed in contact with Marciano for months through calls, FaceTime, texts, invitations, and even location sharing. That behavior confirms a continued relationship, not a person reacting to sexual assault.”
Brunette claimed that Demi’s allegations caused “severe” damage to his reputation.
“They accuse Marciano of criminal sexual conduct he did not commit. They were published broadly, republished repeatedly, and framed to harden into ‘truth’ in the minds of viewers,” the docs read. “The damage has been immediate and severe, including lost professional opportunities, harassment by strangers, and lasting harm to Marciano’s reputation.”
After filing the lawsuit, Brunette took to social media to open up about how challenging life had been for him in the past year.
“This past year has been one of the hardest of my life — honestly maybe the hardest ever,” he said in a December 2025 Instagram video. “I know if you have seen me, on TV or on the internet, you know I like to joke around and have fun and always keep the energy high. But behind the scenes, I’ve been dealing with a lot mentally — it’s really f***** me up.”
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