Nine more women have come forward with allegations that music mogul Russell Simmons raped or sexually harassed them in reports published Wednesday by the New York Times and Los Angeles Times.
Four of the women spoke on the record with the New York Times, emboldened, they said, by the sea change in how victims’ stories have been treated in the wake of allegations against disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein and other high-profile men in entertainment and other industries.
Three of the four women who spoke to the Times said Simmons raped them after exhibiting sexually violent and abusive behavior.
Others said they made the decision to come forward after reading Simmons’ denials to earlier allegations, including those made by model Keri Claussen Khalighi, who told the Los Angeles Times in November that Simmons assaulted her after he and film director Brett Ratner took her back to the music mogul’s apartment under the guise of showing her a music video they were working on.
In a guest column for the Hollywood Reporter last month, screenwriter Jenny Lumet also accused Simmons of raping her in 1991.
Taken together, the allegations span from the early 1980s, when Simmons was cementing his status as an elder statesman of hip-hop via Def Jam records, to just a few years ago.
Allegations of rape
Drew Dixon told the New York Times she was working as an executive at Def Jam Recordings in 1995 when Simmons started to act sexually abusive. Dixon, who was 24 at the time, tried to stave off the harassment until later that year, when she said Simmons raped her in his Manhattan apartment.
She quit her position at Def Jam soon after.
“I was broken,” she told the New York Times.
Toni Sallie was a 28-year-old music journalist for the trade magazine Black Radio Exclusive when she met Simmons while on assignment in 1987. After a few dates, their relationship didn’t work out, she said, but they remained in touch and one night the following year, Simmons invited her to a party at his apartment.
When she arrived, however, she discovered they were alone. She told the Times that while giving her a tour of the apartment, Simmons threw her on a bed and raped her.
Tina Baker, a singer at the time, was also allegedly attacked after agreeing to return to the music mogul’s apartment in the early 1990s. Once inside, she told the Times, Simmons pinned her down and raped her.
“I did nothing,” she said. “I shut my eyes and waited for it to end.”
Sherri Hines, a member of hip-hop group Mercedes Ladies who went by the stage name Sheri Sher when she encountered Simmons in 1983, told the LA Times that the music mogul raped her in his office after running into her at nightclub when she was just 17 or 18 years old.
After sitting down on a couch, she said, he pinned her down and raped her despite her attempts to fight him off.
“I left crying,” she told the paper.
Following the allegations by Lumet and Khalighi, Simmons, now 60, announced that he was stepping down from his business empire, including his yoga venture Tantric, so as not to serve as a distraction.
But on Wednesday after the reports by the LA Times and New York Times were published, Simmons issued a much more strongly worded statement denying the accusations.
“I vehemently deny all these allegations. These horrific accusations have shocked me to my core and all of my relations have been consensual,” he said. “I have enormous respect for the women’s movement worldwide and their struggle for respect, dignity, equality and power.”
Culled from Buzzfeed
Emeh Achanga,the CEO of the Miss Petite Nigeria Brand is a lawyer turned blogger. She is very passionate about writing, with several publications and awards to her credit .She is currently working on publishing a collection of short stories which are basically a memoir about her exciting true experiences.
