Casey Anthony’s estranged father could sue her for defamation after she alleges he raped her and killed her daughter, top lawyers have told the Post.
The woman, once dubbed “America’s most hated mother”, made the allegations in a new Peacock docu-series, in which she calls her ex-cop father George Anthony a “pedophile” and blames him for the death to be in charge of the two-year-old Caylee.
Anthony also accused her father of repeatedly raping her when she was young. She first made the claims at her 2011 trial for Caylee’s murder – in which she was acquitted – and is now repeating them on The Peacock Show.
George has previously denied both claims and declined to comment further.
If her claims are false, she could face serious legal liability, New York intellectual property attorney Richard Altman told The Post.
“If she said it at her trial, it would be a privilege,” Altman explained. “Of course if she says it outside of a trial it’s a criminal offense and if she repeats it now even though that was theoretically years ago [her dad] still has a year after her.”
Alan Lewis, a partner at Carter Ledyard & Milburn who specializes in defamation and criminal defense, explained that whether Anthony’s statements about her father were true or false, her words legally qualify as a “statement of fact” — opening up the possibility a legal case.
“The statement that so-and-so raped me is a factual statement that can be proved or disproved and therefore qualifies as the type of statement that can be libel,” he said.
“In theory, does he have a legally sufficient case to present? It seems so.”
Casey claims on The Peacock Show that when she was growing up, her father “put a pillow on my face and smothered me to knock me out.”
Describing the harrowing alleged abuse, she said, “I’m sure there were times when I was a child when I was incapacitated and my body was limp and lifeless.”
The docu-series is the first time she has spoken out on video in over a decade, and it shows her bursting into tears as she admitted “dark” fears that her father had also abused Caylee.
“I know what he did to me – and that was my fear. I had a job — to protect her,” she said through tears from Caylee.
“I let her down over and over again because I was still protecting the person who hurt me,” she said of her father. “I protected my abuser – and protected her abuser. And that kills me.”
If her father brings a case, he would have to prove that she made her claims with genuine malice, Lewis added.
“Someone like Casey Anthony, who suffered what she suffered – despite her own previous conviction for not telling the truth – could be a person with sympathy for a jury that should give her father a break to because of.” to sue for defamation,” he claimed.
In the documentary, Casey recounts a version of events that differs from what she told police after her mother, Cindy, called 911 to report Caylee missing on July 15, 2008 — a month after she was last seen alive in Florida.
According to transcripts of two 911 calls, Cindy claimed her 3-year-old granddaughter had been missing for a month. She told police she “found my daughter’s car today and it smells like there was a dead body in the damn car.”
Casey then picks up the phone and tells the operator that Caylee was taken by a nanny named Zenida Fernandez Gonzalez.
Casey was arrested the next day on charges of child neglect, false testimony and disability. At the opening of her 2011 murder trial, Casey’s attorney admitted the babysitter never existed, then claimed Caylee drowned in the family pool.
