sexual assault
Superstar producer Metro Boomin is facing a civil lawsuit over allegations that he raped and impregnated a woman in 2016, then referenced the incident in one of his songs.
In a complaint filed Tuesday (Oct. 29) in Los Angeles court, attorneys for Vanessa LeMaistre say she blacked out after ingesting a Xanax and a shot of alcohol in his recording studio during the September 2016 session, then awoke to find herself being sexually assaulted by Metro (Leland Wayne).
“The next thing Ms. LeMaistre can recall is waking up on a bed in a different location with Wayne raping her and being completely unable to move or make a sound,” her lawyers write. “At no point during this encounter was Ms. LeMaistre able to consent to any sexual activity, and Wayne’s conduct without question constituted rape and sexual assault.”
In a response statement, Metro Boomin’s attorney Lawrence Hinkle II called the lawsuit “a pure shakedown” against his client: “These are false accusations. Mr. Wayne refused to pay her months ago, and he refuses to pay her now. Mr. Wayne will defend himself in court. He will file a claim for malicious prosecution once he prevails.”
The lawsuit claims Metro exploited the death of LeMaistre’s infant son to gain her trust, and that she believed they had “bonded over the ability of music to help people in their darkest moments.” But it says that belief was “shattered” after he invited her to the studio for the September 2016 session.
“Meeting Wayne resulted in Ms. LeMaistre suffering from the second worst thing that ever happened to her — being raped by someone who pretended to be her friend for months,” her lawyers write. “Ms. LeMaistre is still working to put herself back together after experiencing such an extraordinary amount of trauma at the hands of Wayne — someone she truly believed to be her friend but turned out to be her worst nightmare.”
Weeks after the alleged assault, LeMaistre says she learned she was pregnant. She says she did not have sex with anyone else other than Metro and that the pregnancy was the result of the alleged rape. Due to the “recent loss of her son and the traumatic cause of her pregnancy,” her lawyers say she could not continue the pregnancy and had an abortion in November 2016.
Notably, the lawsuit claims the alleged attack is referenced in the 2017 song “Rap Saved Me,” released by 21 Savage, Offset and Metro on their collaborative studio album Without Warning. The lyrics in question are: “She took a Xanny, then she fainted/ I’m from the gutter, ain’t no changing/ From the gutter, rap saved me/ She drive me crazy, have my baby.”
“The lyrics were horrifying for Ms. LeMaistre to hear over and over again, as they recounted the situation that happened to her and caused further trauma,” her lawyers write.
LeMaistre is represented by lawyers from Wigdor, the same law firm that filed a high-profile civil lawsuit against Sean “Diddy” Combs last year on behalf of his ex-girlfriend Cassie Ventura — a case that was then followed by a flood of other allegations and eventual federal criminal charges.
In a statement, the Wigdor attorneys referenced the alleged connection between the lyrics to “Rap Saved Me” and LeMaistre’s accusations.
“Metro Boomin has built a successful career with lyrics and social media that are not only offensive but also explicitly outline his intentions to harm women,” the firm wrote in a joint statement with LeMaistre’s co-counsel from the law firm Gerard Bengali. “These are more than mere words, and it’s time for him to be held accountable for his manipulative tactics and unacceptable behavior.”
Read the entire lawsuit against Metro here:
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Sean “Diddy” Combs and his ongoing legal issues have introduced several layers since his arrest, including a series of new lawsuits alleging a variety of criminal activity. In one of the latest lawsuits, a John Doe claims that a professional star athlete prevented Diddy from sexually assaulting him at an event for the Ciroc brand.
Page Six reports that the lawsuit from John Doe, who is said to be a luxury car salesman and rented jewelry broker, states that Sean “Diddy” Combs hosted a Ciroc launch party in 2022. According to the lawsuit, Diddy allegedly invited the man into a private office suite where he removed his pants and exposed his private parts.
“Combs continued to move closer and then grabbed Plaintiff’s genitals through his pants, squeezing them in a rough and sexual manner,” reads a portion of the lawsuit. The account from John Doe continues with him recalling from his side that as Combs allegedly continued to crowd his personal space, the star athlete came into the room and halted the mogul from assaulting John Doe further.
John Doe wrote in the legal filing that Combs was one of his customers, although it isn’t clear which of his businesses Combs patronized in the past. He added that Diddy left the party after the athlete stepped in.
This latest lawsuit comes after a weekend of new filings, including one woman coming forth to say that Combs, a famous male and famous female celebrity allegedly raped her during a MTV Music Awards afterparty when she was 13 back in 2000.
Via his legal team, Combs is maintaining his innocence via a statement to the outlet reading, “Mr. Combs and his legal team have full confidence in the facts, their legal defenses, and the integrity of the judicial process. In court, the truth will prevail: that Mr. Combs has never sexually assaulted anyone—adult or minor, man or woman.”
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The allegations against Diddy continue to grow by the day. Four different men are now accusing him of sexual assault.
As reported by TMZ, there are more individuals who say they suffered at the hands of the entertainment mogul. The first John Doe says he used to work at the Ecko Clothing in 2008. During a visit to Macy’s flagship location in Manhattan he bumped into Diddy and three of his body guards in the stockroom. The “Missing You” rapper allegedly had him pistol-whipped; while on the ground, he says Diddy then told him “Suck my d***, Ecko,” and proceeded to orally rape him.
Another man says he was contracted to work Diddy’s 2006 White Party. The plaintiff believes he consumed a laced beverage while at the event. Later on, he says Diddy forced him into a van and sodomized him. This plaintiff claims that the assault left him with semen leaking out of his anus. Another unidentified male shares a similar story but with his incident happening in 2011. This man says he drank a beverage and soon after become disoriented. He says he then woke up in a bedroom with different men sodomizing him but “distinctly recalls” Diddy above him during the crime.
The last man says he attended a White Party in 1998 when he was only 16 years old. He alleges he took a photograph with Diddy, but the entrepreneur took an interest in the young man and asked to speak to him privately. This plaintiff maintains Diddy expressed that the youngster had the right look for a career in music and then asked him to drop his pants so he can inspect his private area. The man gave in to the peer pressure and says Diddy went on to fondle his genitals.
Representing the four aforementioned plaintiffs is Tony Buzbee, the Texas-based lawyer who recently claimed to be representing a total of 120 victims of Diddy. Diddy’s lawyer has denied these allegations in an exclusive statement to USA Today. “The press conference and 1-800 number that preceded today’s barrage of filings were clear attempts to garner publicity. “In court, the truth will prevail: That Mr. Combs has never sexually assaulted anyone — adult or minor, man or woman.”
Diddy maintains his innocence. His federal trial is set to commence May 2025.
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It seems like whenever Lil Reese begins to trend on social media it’s almost never for anything positive and unfortunately that once again happens to be the case.
According to TMZ, the Chicago rapper was just arrested and booked in Los Angeles for allegedly raping a woman he went on a date with.
Reese and the woman in question went out on a dinner date this past Saturday night (July 13) before he took her to a hotel in Downtown Los Angeles where the sexual assault allegedly occurred. Once in the hotel room, the woman rejected Reese’s sexual advances before she said he forced himself on top of her and sexually assaulted her.
TMZ reports:
We’re told the woman then went straight down to the hotel lobby, and called the police around 3:30 AM Sunday.
We’re told officers promptly arrived on the scene and arrested Reese on suspicion of sexual assault and rape.
Boosie Badazz was an apparent witness to the arrest and put out an APB on Reese’s friends to bail him out.
Lil Boosie being there at the same time and seeing Reese hauled off to jail was hella random.
Lil Reese was eventually released on a $100K bond.
What do y’all think of the situation that Lil Reese finds himself in? Let us know in the comments section below.
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Irv Gotti, the Murder Inc. Records co-founder and longtime music executive, faces a lawsuit from a woman who claims she was raped by the New York native. The lawsuit was filed in Miami-Dade County and accuses Irv Gotti of sexually assaulting the woman over two years across several locales.
The Miami New Times reports that the lawsuit against Irv Gotti, 54, was filed on July 11 in Florida’s Miami-Dade County courts. The alleged victim, using the name Jane Doe, claims that Gotti, real name Irving Lorenzo, sexually assaulted her between 2020 and 2022 across Atlanta, Miami, and the island of Saint Martin.
More from Miami New Times:
“As a result of this sexually abusive relationship, Plaintiff has suffered severe emotional and psychological harm for which she had to be committed to a psychiatric ward,” the lawsuit (attached at the bottom of this story) reads. “These injuries continue and affect Plaintiff to this day.”
The woman alleges that she and Gotti met through a mutual friend at a poker tournament in the summer of 2020, and Gotti invited her on a vacation to Saint Martin afterward. But upon arriving on the Caribbean island, Gotti allegedly coerced her into having sex with him, threatening to send her home if she didn’t.
The lawsuit states that Gotti and Jane Doe entered into a romantic relationship but claims that she was forced to perform sex acts against her will and verbally abused her. According to the filing, Jane Doe claims that Gotti would demand she perform sexual favors under the pressures of coercion.
Irv Gotti has yet to respond to the lawsuit and explosive allegations within.
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Sean “Diddy” Combs has been hit with a new lawsuit by exotic dancer Adria English, who claims she was a victim of sex trafficking orchestrated in the 2000s by the Bad Boy mogul and others she named in a sprawling complaint filed Wednesday (July 3) in New York federal court.
According to the lawsuit, filed by attorneys Ariel Mitchell-Kidd and Steven Metcalf, English was a victim of sex trafficking at the hands of Combs along with his fellow defendants Tamiko Thomas, who was allegedly an employee of Bad Boy Entertainment at the time, and a man named Jacob Arabov (a.k.a. Jacob The Jeweler). She alleges that the trio was “aided and abetted” by several companies also named as defendants in the complaint, including Bad Boy Entertainment, Combs Global Enterprises, Sean John Holdings, VIBE magazine and its current parent company, Penske Media Corporation (PMC). (PMC did not own VIBE when the alleged events occurred.)
Notably, the complaint alleges that the actions of all defendants amounted to a violation of federal RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) laws, which have historically been used to target the mafia, drug cartels and other organized crime rings (a similar state-level law in Georgia has formed the basis of prosecutors’ case against rapper Young Thug, whom they allege leads a violent Atlanta street gang known as Young Slime Life). These types of racketeering laws make it easier for prosecutors to sweep up members of alleged criminal enterprises based on many individual actions.
English claims she first came into contact with Combs in 2004 — when she says she was working as a dancer at Larry Flynt’s Hustler Club in Manhattan — after accompanying her then-boyfriend, model Anthony Gallo, to an audition for a Sean John modeling campaign. While at the audition, she says Gallo and another model were asked to perform fellatio on Combs as a condition of booking the job. After Gallo refused, she claims he was later told he could book the campaign if he commanded English to work as a go-go dancer at Combs’ Labor Day White Party in the Hamptons, N.Y. “In an effort to assist Mr. Gallo’s desire to become a model, Plaintiff agreed to what she believed to be legitimate employment,” the complaint reads.
While working the event, English says she was instructed to give lap dances and be “sexually flirtatious” with guests and “forced to consume liquor and illicit narcotics,” including bottles she claims were laced with ecstasy. She alleges she was subsequently invited to perform at additional White Parties, where Combs and Thomas — whom she compares to Ghislaine Maxwell, the former associate of late sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein — eventually “groomed” her into sex trafficking.
By her third White Party, English claims that Combs and Thomas demanded she partake in sexual intercourse with guests, using knowledge of her past work in adult films “to coerce” her into doing so. This activity, she claims, continued through 2009 at White Parties thrown at Combs’ Hampton and Miami residences.
One of the men English says she was forced to have sexual intercourse with during this period was Jacob Arabov (Jacob The Jeweler) at the behest of Combs, as she feared she could lose her job along with her boyfriend’s future modeling opportunities. “Plaintiff, fearing not only her safety, but her and her then-boyfriend’s job security, did as instruct and went with Defendant Jacob where she engaged in forced sexual intercourse with Defendant Jacob at the demand and behest of Defendant Combs,” the complaint reads.
English further alleges that Combs kept hidden cameras in every room of his Hamptons and Miami homes and believes her sexual assaults were caught on tape, including when she was “unconscious.”
During this period, English also alleges that VIBE magazine published an image of her in a November 2006 story about Combs’ White Parties without her consent, claiming its use violates her “rights to privacy via misappropriation.” She claims she “did not discover the infringing use” until April 2024. She further accuses VIBE and parent company PMC of “intentionally and falsely marketing and promoting” Combs’ White Parties “as a high-profile networking and social event in an effort to disguise and deceive the real intent of the event…and to further the goals of the Defendants illegal and criminal Enterprise.”
English says she continued putting up with Combs’ demands in part due to promises that he would help her break into the music business by putting her in an all-female music group. She says she finally detached herself from Combs when she returned to California in 2009, at which point she claims she suffered from deep depression and anxiety in response to the past trauma of being assaulted and trafficked, along with her unraveling career.
According to the lawsuit, English’s victimization at the hands of Combs and his alleged co-conspirators has led her to suffer continued “extreme emotional distress” that has impacted every aspect of her personal life.
In a statement sent to Billboard, Combs’ attorney Jonathan Davis said, “No matter how many lawsuits are filed it won’t change the fact that Mr. Combs has never sexually assaulted or sex trafficked anyone. We live in a world where anyone can file a lawsuit for any reason and without any proof. Fortunately, a fair and impartial judicial process exists to find the truth and Mr. Combs is confident he will prevail against these and other baseless claims in court.”
Billboard reached out to Thomas and Arabov for comment but had not heard back by press time. PMC declined to comment.
This is the 10th sexual misconduct lawsuit to be filed against Combs since his ex-girlfriend, pop star Cassie, made waves with her sexual abuse suit against the mogul in November, which was settled less than 24 hours later. He has vehemently denied all cases against him. Combs’ Miami and Los Angeles homes were raided by federal agents in March, though no arrests were made.
In May, disturbing footage obtained by CNN showed Combs abusing Cassie in an elevator bank at a Los Angeles hotel in March 2016. Soon after the footage came out, Combs apologized for his actions, which he says he was “disgusted” by.
“I was f—ed up. I mean, I hit rock bottom. But I make no excuses,” he said in the since-deleted Instagram clip. “My behavior on that video is inexcusable. I take full responsibility for my actions in that video. I’m disgusted. I was disgusted then when I did it, I’m disgusted now.”
In the wake of the allegations, the fallout for Combs has continued to reverberate. Last month, his media company Revolt announced employees would become the company’s largest shareholders after Combs reportedly sold his stake to an anonymous buyer. Also in June, Combs’ Miami Day honor was revoked and Howard University withdrew an honorary degree it bestowed upon him.
Editor’s Note: PMC is the parent company of Billboard.
Most of the men in Dorothy Carvello‘s new novel The Circle Broken are horrible: Bucky, a Nashville record-label chief who screams in a crowded restaurant that his wife is the “whore of Babylon”; The Colonel, who controls his country-star client and takes 40% of his royalties, leaving the singer with just 10%; and Michael, the tortured young talent who suffers a traumatic brain injury and berates and gaslights his partner.
“All my books that I write — and will be writing — will always have the theme of the corruption of the music business,” says Carvello, whose previous book was 2018’s Anything for a Hit: An A&R Woman’s Story of Surviving the Music Industry, which she followed up with a December 2022 sexual-assault lawsuit against two major labels and three longtime record executives. “And there will always be themes of women as the unsung heroes behind the men in any place in the music business.”
Carvello’s lawsuit repeated many of the allegations from her first book. She accuses the late Atlantic Records co-founder Ahmet Ertegun and former Universal, Sony and Warner chief Doug Morris of “horrifically sexually assaulting” her and claims Atlantic, its parent company Warner Music Group and former Atlantic exec Jason Flom “knowingly enabled … outrageous workplace sexual assault.” Among her claims: Female employees were “routinely exposed to Mr. Ertegun masturbating”; Morris carried a pornographic magazine around the office and placed it on Carvello’s desk when she was Ertegun’s secretary; and Ertegun committed “forceful and nonconsensual attacks” on Carvello at a Skid Row concert and in a corporate helicopter afterward.
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(Flom did not respond to requests for comment. Warner has said in a statement that the labels “take allegations of misconduct very seriously. These allegations date back 35 years, to before WMG was a standalone company. We are speaking with people who were there at the time, taking into consideration that many key individuals are deceased or into their 80s and 90s.” Morris, through his attorney, said Carvello’s allegations are “without legal or factual merit.” And Rick Werder, a former attorney for Ertegun’s widow, Mica, who filed a motion to dismiss Carvello’s lawsuit before her death last December at 97, called Carvello’s claims “utterly meritless.”)
Oral arguments were scheduled to begin in New York Supreme Court in mid-June, but a judge postponed them to September. “My jury will have to have trigger warnings because there’s a lot more that wasn’t in the book,” Carvello says, during a half-hour discussion about her writing career and the lawsuit.
Below is an excerpt of the conversation.
The only character name that appears in The Circle Broken as well as Anything for a Hit is Joel Katz, the real-life music attorney. In the new book, the fictional Katz gives a speech honoring a Nashville record mogul and says he’s “proof that If you do good enough in this town, you’ll be rewarded in kind. Unless you’re Jewish.” How conscious was your decision to put Katz in both books?
It was a conscious decision, because Joel Katz was the only premiere lawyer involved in so many people’s careers, artists and executives, and pretty much ran the town of Nashville. Also, I wanted to show that if you’re Jewish, Nashville is a town that’s hard. If you’re gay, Jewish, if you’re not white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant, it’s a tough town.
Why in general did you set The Circle Broken in Nashville?
I started to go to Nashville in 1988 and my first experience was at Atlantic Records Nashville. They were trying to sign an artist, and I was sitting there, and the person said to the artist, “Jesus wants us to have your publishing.” I was blown away by that. It always fascinated me, the religious undertones of Nashville. Even when I went down as recently as five years ago, a label head asked me what church I belonged to. I said, “I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of the Catholic church — we have our own bank and we have our own ambassadors.”
Cee Cee, the singer-turned-manager in the book, is the victim of abuse and, despite making a few questionable decisions, she’s full of empathy and has a lot of love to give. How personal was writing that character?
I wanted to show all the characters struggling with religious oppression, in a way. I went to an all-Catholic school, a Catholic college. Religion teaches you to obey. As women, we get it no matter where we turn. And in the music business, there are very few women. We’ve never had a woman even run a major corporation. We still have three white men running the game. When the Warner Music Group just changed CEOs [in September 2022], they had a chance to really do something and they still stuck with a white male [Robert Kyncl]. I wanted to show a woman who breaks free and makes a choice who gets away from that religious stuff and falls in love and goes for it.
Why write Anything for a Hit first, then file the lawsuit afterwards?
The law changed in New York in 2022. [The state passed the Adult Survivors Act in May of that year, eliminating the statute of limitations for sexual-abuse cases for a year — which led to more than 3,000 civil suits through last Thanksgiving, including Carvello’s in December 2022.] I couldn’t sue because I was time-barred. The book was published in 2018, and when I found out the law changed, I interviewed lawyers and decided to sue.
After Anything for a Hit came out, did you hear back from the people you wrote about?
No. I received not one pushback, not one letter, not one lawsuit, nothing. Dead silence.
One of the most disturbing details in Anything for a Hit, amid many descriptions of sexual abuse, is your allegation that Ertegun fractured your arm because he was angry about a subpar Skid Row concert after you’d steered Atlantic into signing the band. How long did it take you to get over that abuse, if at all?
Well, I’m not over it, and I probably never will be. I know what happened to me. I know what that truth is and I’m prepared to air that truth in a court of law, with a jury of my peers, at 60 Centre Street [site of the New York County Courthouse].
After the #MeToo movement led to men in the music business being publicly accused of sexual assault, has anything changed?
We’ve had no #MeToo in the music business. Where is the #MeToo?
Several men have been called out in lawsuits and press reports — most recently Diddy, but also Russell Simmons, L.A. Reid, Charlie Walk.
No. I don’t think anything’s changed. Like I said, we have three white males running the business.
How were you able to make the transition from non-fiction and get a book deal in the fiction world?
I had to get a different agent and sell him on the idea, and that was not easy because the book tells two stories — my critique of the music business overall in Nashville, and the story of a woman, two women actually, struggling to help this one man. I had to learn how to write fiction. It took three years. The next book is almost finished and that’s taken me less than a year.
What can you say about it?
It’s called Frontman, and it’s going to be about a rock star and the six women in his life throughout his career that started in the ’70s in the U.K.
When did you notice that you had what the music business calls “solid gold ears,” and the talent to be a record-label A&R person?
When we were doing it in the ’80s and the ’90s, you had radio, and you could get a feel for what was happening and go out and see somebody play live and see how people reacted to the songs. I never say I have great ears. I want to clear my name. I want to reclaim my position in history as the first woman at Atlantic Records.
Where are you right now?
In New York. Born and raised. You’ll never get me to Nashville.
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Power Book II: Ghost star Michael Rainey Jr. should be celebrating the return of his hit Power spinoff series. Instead, he had to address a disturbing sexual assault incident he was the victim of.
Rainey addressed his fans on Monday, June 10, after he was sexually assaulted during TyTy James’ Twitch livestream.
Viewers of the live stream and fans of the young actor were stunned when James’ younger sister inappropriately grabbed Rainey Jr. while he was making a guest appearance on the popular Twitch stream.
He sent a statement on the incident through his rep, which went viral on Elon Musk’s trash platform X, formerly known as Twitter.
Rainey is “deeply saddened and shocked by the events that occurred during the TyTy James live stream this past weekend. He is still processing what happened and doesn’t entirely know how to feel about it,” the statement sent to PEOPLE reads.
“This situation is not being taken lightly,” the statement continued. “Sexual harassment and assault are serious and unacceptable acts. Taking advantage of someone’s celebrity in this manner devalues entertainers and underscores the need to respect their humanity. Those who entertain us are human beings just like everyone else.”
Rainey Said He Was Still In Shock Following The Incident
Rainey then hopped on his Instagram account and addressed the incident, writing that he was “still in shock,” adding, “Can’t take it lightly because I know I would be in serious trouble if the roles were reversed.”
“This is an unfortunate situation that I can’t condone in any way,” he continues. “The fact is, sexual assault is never okay, regardless of gender or status. We’re all human, and we should respect each other. Most importantly, we should respect ourselves.”
While we couldn’t see James’ sister grope Rainey because her hands were covered by three younger children in the viral clip, the Power star’s visibly uncomfortable look on his face let us know something wild was going on.
He reportedly left right after the groping incident.
TyTy James Apologizes For His Sister’s Behavior
Following the backlash, James immediately issued an apology on his sister’s behalf.
“After the actions that occurred during my stream last night I would like to sincerely apologize to Michael and his family for what took place.”
“My little sister was completely wrong and out of line. What she did was very inappropriate and unacceptable. I am truly embarrassed and disgusted by her actions,” James wrote on Instagram. “I completely respect whatever direction Michael wants to go in this situation. After watching the clip, I was completely taken aback by what she done [sic]. I will take extreme precautions with future streams to avoid similar issues and have banned her from participating in future streams. I do not condone any type of assault.”
50 Cent Plays Himself Trying To Be Funny
Rainey’s boss and former Power co-star, 50 Cent, was the target of X slander after trying to make light of the 23-year-old actor’s situation.
“Wait sexual assault 😟 from a male perspective this was an aggressive advance. LOL HE’s fine no charges are being pressed,” Diddy’ longtime nemesis and professional troll wrote in a now-deleted post.
The G-Unit general was quickly reminded that nothing is actually “deleted” on social media.
“This is the same 50 cent who’s supposed to be exposing Diddy for predatory behavior. He’s such a charlatan and opportunist,” a post on X read.
Welp.
If you or anyone you know were a victim of sexual assault, you can reach out to the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673) or go to rainn.org.
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2. The accuracy
4. Where’s the lie?
5. She damn sure did
The-Dream, a singer and producer who has worked with Beyoncé, Rihanna and others, was hit with a sex trafficking lawsuit Tuesday (June 4) that accuses him of subjecting a young songwriter to an “abusive, violent, and manipulative relationship” that included an alleged incident of rape.
In a lawsuit filed in Manhattan federal court, Chanaaz Mangroe claims the producer (Terius Gesteelde-Diamant) used promises of career advancement to lure a “young and vulnerable artist” into “a prolonged nightmare” filled with “violent sexual acts.”
“Over more than a year, Ms. Mangroe experienced trauma that she has still not recovered from—she is broken as an artist, constantly afraid for her physical safety, and plagued by reminders of the violence and control she experienced at the hands of Dream, who has continued his successful career unscathed by his horrific acts,” her attorneys write.
In addition to numerous allegations of violent sex, the lawsuit includes an allegation that The-Dream raped Mangroe in May 2015. Her lawyers say he pinned her down inside a sprinter van, started “forcibly having sex with her” and choked her so intensely that she potentially lost consciousness.
Representatives for The-Dream did not immediately return a request for comment on Tuesday.
In addition to five studio albums of his own, The-Dream has credits on a wide range of hits, including Rihanna’s 2007 smash “Umbrella” and Beyonce’s 2008 chart-topper “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It).” He’s also worked with Britney Spears, Justin Bieber, Kanye West and numerous other stars.
Mangroe, a native of the Netherlands, claims that The-Dream reached out to her in 2014 when she was just 23 years old and working in the United States on an international visa. After she sent samples of her work, she says he invited her to Atlanta to work with him and his producing partner, Tricky Stewart.
Over time, her lawyers say The-Dream “used his age and influence in the industry to manipulate the young artist into believing that she needed him to be successful.” They say he promised to help her secure a visa extension, sign a record deal with a major label and even offered her a chance to open for Beyonce’s upcoming tour.
But in reality, her lawyers say The-Dream “used Ms. Mangroe for his base desires, which manifested in violent sexual acts and vicious psychological torture.” In addition to the alleged rape, they say he frequently subjected her to violent choking during sex, “berated” her during sex and used recordings of their sex to “threaten Ms. Mangroe into silence.”
“Nearly a decade later, Ms. Mangroe is still putting the pieces of her life back together, but she knows that without speaking up about what Dream did to her, she will never be able to heal from the harm he has caused,” her lawyers write. “She therefore brings this lawsuit to speak up for herself and other female artists who have been tormented by powerful and selfish men in the recording industry.
In addition to The-Dream, the lawsuit also names Sony Music’s Epic Records as a defendant, arguing that the producer’s “depraved behavior” was facilitated by the company. The lawsuit claims Epic “benefited from facilitating his behavior to the extent it kept their relationship with the talented musician viable and ensured continued profit from his work.”
Reps for both Epic and parent company Sony Music did not immediately return requests for comment on Tuesday.
The lawsuit was filed by Douglas Wigdor, a New York attorney known for representing alleged sexual assault victims. Wigdor’s firm has filed numerous abuse cases against music industry figures in recent months, including the bombshell case against Sean “Diddy” Combs filed by his ex-partner Cassie.
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Diddy, real name Sean Combs, is already scrambling from a personal image standpoint based on the leak of the video showing Combs violently assaulting his ex-girlfriend, Cassie Ventura. Amid the chatter surrounding those images, another accuser has filed a lawsuit alleging that Diddy sexually assaulted her in 2003.
As reported by CNN, Crystal McKinney, a winner of MTV’s Model Mission series, was 22 at the time she met Diddy during a Men’s Fashion Week dinner in 2003. McKinney wrote in her complaint that Combs invited her to his nearby recording studio where she claims he allegedly drugged her with marijuana laced with a stronger narcotic.
The details of McKinney’s accounts of the events might be disturbing to some so we urge caution from this point forward. McKinney added that she was already under the influence of alcohol when she was handed the marijuana joint and says she was then led to a bathroom by Combs and forced to perform oral sex on him.
McKinney says she lost consciousness while at the studio and woke up in a cab heading to the home of a designer she was working with at the time and realized that she was sexually assaulted.
Bad Boy Records, Sean John Clothing LLC, and Universal Music Group Inc. are all named as defendants in McKinney’s lawsuit and according to CNN, none of them made any public inference to the filing. The lawsuit was filed over violations noted in the New York Victims of Gender-Motivated Violence Protection Law. It is the sixth such lawsuit, all of which make mention of sexual assault
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