Nicki Minaj and her husband, Kenneth Petty, face a lawsuit due to Petty’s attempted rape conviction in 1995. The two are accused of harassing and intimidating the woman.
Jennifer Hough, 43, filed a lawsuit accusing the couple of attempting to force her to recant the rape. The suit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York.
According to NBC News, Minaj even went so far as to attempt to bribe Hough.
The suit states that Petty and Minaj began contacting Hough and her family members after Petty was arrested last year. The arrest came when authorities said he failed to register as a sex offender in California over the case.
The suit details days after the arrest; Hough was contacted by a childhood friend. She told the friend that she “wished it could all just go away forever,” referring to the rape.
The friend offered to help Hough, and she received a phone call from Minaj a few days later. Minaj allegedly told Hough that she could have her publicist draft a statement recanting the rape, but Hough declined.
The suit further alleged that one of Hough’s family members was offered $500,000 from Minaj if Hough recanted the rape. On another occasion, the victim was offered $20,000 if she signed a prepared document retracting her statements about Perry. The rapper also offered to send happy birthday videos to Hough’s teenage daughter “as a bonus.”
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The lawsuit states, Hough was sexually assaulted by Petty at a house in Queens on September 16, 1994. Hough and Petty were both 16 at the time.
Petty allegedly grabbed Hough at a bus stop by the back of her jacket, pressed a knife into her back and told her to “start walking.” Petty took Hough to a nearby house as she “began pleading for her life.” After the rape, Hough fled from the house and ran to her high school, telling a security guard. The police were contacted, and Petty was arrested at the home.
He was sentenced to between 18 and 54 months in state prison for the sexual assault and rape case. According to New York State Department of Corrections records, he served just under four years and was released in January of 1999.
Hough’s attorney, Tyrone A. Blackburn, told NBC News that his client decided to come forward with the lawsuit because she has spent the past several years trying to “move on with her life and away from the horrors of 1994.”
“They did a whole bunch of things to this woman probably within a 7 months span that most people would not be able to endure,” the attorney said. “She moved three times. She changed her phone number three times. She did everything that she possibly could to avoid these people, and yet they wanted her to say her true life experience was a lie. That what she went through on that day in 1994 never happened. Enough is enough.”
