Russell Simmons has been accused of having raped a producer at Def Jam Recordings in the 1990s while they were coworkers.
In her lawsuit filed on Tuesday, the woman, known only as Jane Doe, claimed that the music mogul had sexually assaulted and pinned her to his bed during a visit to his Manhattan apartment to obtain his approval for a rough cut of a video.
According to the court document accessed by a news outlet on Tuesday, February 13, Jane Doe claimed that Russell used a “wrestling move” to pin her to the bed and disregarded her cries for him to “get off” and “stop” before allegedly assaulting her sexually.
Russell Simmons has faced allegations of rape previously. A documentary about the accusations of sexual abuse and harassment against the disgraced hip-hop icon was released in 2020.
Simmons was even forced to flee to Bali in 2017 after over ten women reported that he had sexually assaulted them over a few decades.
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Before the purported incident, Doe’s career was advancing, according to Kenya Davis and Sigrid McCawley, the attorney for the client.
“She was proud of her contributions to the emerging hip-hop genre, but Mr. Simmons, a wealthy and powerful celebrity whose wealth and influence allowed his abusive behavior to go unchallenged for years, disrupted and derailed her hard work and her music career.