Content Warning: Portions of the following entry contain mentions and/or depictions of sexual violence or abuse. If you need support or you or a loved one are in an abusive situation, please contact the National Sexual Violence Resource Center or call 1-800-656-HOPE.

Overview

The Bobby Lee Tijuana Story refers to a story presented as a joke by comedian Bobby Lee several times on various podcasts (notably during a 2014 episode of the DVDASA podcast) about allegedly having sex with a young prostitute whose age he didn't know at the Adelita brothel while working in Tijuana, saying she looked like "Natalie Portman in The Professional." Portman was 12 at the time of the film. According to Lee, the girl started crying as they were having sex and he "power fucked" her to get it over with. The story started to go viral in 2020 as people shared it in an attempt to expose Lee. Before Lee officially responded to the story, Ethan Klein of the H3 Podcast claimed he'd spoken to Lee about the story and that he claims it was a joke. In April 2023, Lee claimed if was a joke on an episode of his podcast Tigerbelly.

Background

On November 27th, 2014, Bobby Lee appeared on episode 71 of the DVDASA^[1] podcast with David Choe and Asa Akira. During the episode, Bobby Lee tells a story that he forewarns could "ruin his career." He says that he worked in a restaurant in Tijuana and that there's a street there that they called "hooker alley" where there were prostitutes, but he didn't know their ages. He said at the time he was young and "never got girls." Lee says he saw a girl facing the brick wall and that's when he knew she was the one, then says she looked like Natalie Portman in The Professional while adding "not that young, I don't know how old." The girl purportedly grabbed him and asked if he wanted to have sex, he agreed and they went to a room together.

Lee describes turning the lights off, putting a condom on and that she was "cold." He says that at one point while having sex she turned her head and he could see her shaking and crying with "snot bubbles" in her nose. He then says he did what "anyone else would have done" and "power fucked her" to get it over with. The hosts joke around with Lee about the story, Asa joking "maybe she wasn't a hooker, maybe she was waiting for her mom." Lee then says he doesn't feel good about the situation.

The clip was uploaded to Streamable^[2] in 2020 and shared to the /r/Standup^[3] subreddit, titled "Bobby Lee admits to raping a child prostitute in Tijuana," on August 7th, 2020, garnering over 1,800 upvotes in three years (shown below).

Developments

Bobby Lee then told the story several other times on various podcasts in the following years. On July 15th, 2016, Lee told the story during an episode of his own YouTube^[4] podcast, Tigerbelly, garnering over 164,000 views in seven years (clip shown below, left). On January 23rd, 2020, Lee appeared on an episode of Theo Von's YouTube^[5] podcast This Past Weekend, where he told the same story but claimed throughout that the girl was an adult (shown below, right). The video garnered over 4 million views in three years.

Clips of Bobby Lee telling the story gained viral spread throughout the early 2020s. On July 18th, 2021, YouTuber^[10] I am Air uploaded a now-deleted TikTok clip of someone accusing Lee of raping a 12-year-old girl while he was on stage at a comedy club, to which he repeatedly responds, "No I didn't," garnering over 38,000 views in two years (shown below).

In early 2023, numerous videos were uploaded to TikTok assuming the story was true in an attempt to expose Bobby Lee for his behavior. On December 15th, 2022, TikToker^[6] @_imjustzander shared a version of the story, calling Lee a "pedo," garnering over 2.4 million views in four months. On February 9th, 2023, TikToker^[7] @thepodcastpapi posted a clip from the Theo Von appearance that gained over 1.4 million views in two months.

Ethan Klein's Response

On January 27th, 2023, YouTuber reggie condoms reposted a clip from a members-only livestream of the H3 Podcast in which Klein responds to viewers asking about his opinion on the story. Lee has appeared on the H3 Podcast several times. Klein says he talked to Lee about the incident and Lee claims it was a joke, describing it as "dark" and "fucked up." Klein says that the only source of the information is Lee, nobody else is accusing him of anything and there are no secondary accounts of it, so there's nothing he can do about it. He says he'd be "shocked" if Bobby Lee was actually telling this as a true story if it happened because it's so dark and serious.

Bobby Lee's Response

The story continued to spread in April 2023 as several media outlets picked up on it and reported on it, including Cracked^[8] and USA Today.^[9]

On April 5th, 2023, Bobby Lee discussed the story in an episode of his podcast Tigerbelly titled "Bobby Lee's Tijuana Story" (shown below). In the episode he claims the story is a joke.

Search Interest

External References