A former senior executive at Def Jam Recordings said in a lawsuit filed Tuesday that Russell Simmons raped her at his apartment in Manhattan in the late 1990s.
In the complaint, the woman who is identified as Jane Doe and described as an accomplished film producer who joined Simmons’ Def Jam Recordings in the mid-1990s, said they initially had a professional working relationship but that he “suddenly began to turn his rapacious attention toward” her.
“Mr. Simmons would arrive at Def Jam, enter Ms. Doe’s office, and shut the door behind him,” the complaint alleges. “He would sit on her desk, lean over her, aggressively invading her personal space while making sexual innuendos, suggestions, and advances, and rubbing the front of his pants. Mr. Simmons would follow Ms. Doe to the door or block her path to prevent her from opening it again.”
According to the lawsuit, this happened repeatedly before the alleged sexual assault.
On the day of the alleged assault, the woman said she was required to visit Simmons’ apartment, where he typically held meetings, to have him review a rough cut of a video for approval, the lawsuit states. Simmons brought her to a bedroom to watch the video, according to the suit. She said it was not uncommon for him to conduct business in a bedroom while sitting on the bed. The woman alleges he began to “wrestle” with her “in an attempt to appear playful,” that his behavior escalated into aggression and he pinned her down on a bed, according to the suit. She alleges that she repeatedly told him to get off her, but he refused and then raped her.
After the alleged assault, she went back to the office, “but was forever changed.” For weeks, the suit states, she told no one about what happened and she experienced severe dissociation, depression and anxiety.
She quit in 1997, moved to Los Angeles and worked as an executive producer for film and commercial production companies, the suit states.
“She eventually confided in a small group of trusted friends and therapists about what happened — long before the passage of New York’s Adult Survivors Act in 2022,” the suit alleges. New York’s Adult Survivors Act was created to enable sexual assault victims who were 18 or older at the time of the alleged abuse a one-year window to file civil lawsuits against individual people or institutions, even when the statute of limitations had run out. An attorney for the woman said her “legal claims have been preserved,” despite the Act’s expiration in November.
The woman, who lives in California, has worked in the music and entertainment industry for more than 25 years, according to the lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in the Southern District of New York. The suit alleges that Simmons, “through his assaultive behavior,” disabled her career at Def Jam, a job she loved, “at the height of her success and financial viability.”
Her attorneys, Kenya Davis and Sigrid McCawley, said her hard work and her career was disrupted and derailed by Simmons, “a rich and powerful celebrity whose wealth and influence allowed his abusive behavior to go unchallenged for decades.”
“Now a successful writer and producer in the entertainment industry, Jane Doe’s traumatic experiences with Simmons echo those of so many other women who he has preyed upon for decades,” they said.
Simmons, a co-founder of the record label Def Jam Recordings and pioneering figure in the hip-hop world who also found success in fashion and media, denied the allegations in a statement Tuesday.
“I have never engaged in non-consensual sex,” he said in the statement. “I would not, did not, and never will.”
The plaintiff joins a long list of women who have accused Simmons of sexual misconduct in the 1980s, 1990s or in the 2000s, including Drew Dixon, a former Def Jam executive; Jenny Lumet, a former actress and screenwriter of the film “Rachel Getting Married”; and Keri Claussen Khalighi, a model. Jennifer Jarosik, a documentary filmmaker, who sued Simmons in 2018 alleging rape later dropped her $5 million lawsuit. Simmons has denied the allegations.
“When Ms. Doe learned about the accounts of the other survivors, she was struck by how similar they were to her own horrible experience at the hands of Mr. Simmons,” the lawsuit states.
Simmons resigned from his businesses in 2017 after Lumet said he had “sexually violated” her at his apartment in 1991. Dixon is among the women featured in the documentary “On the Record,” about allegations against Simmons that was released in 2020.
The latest accuser is seeking unspecified general, punitive and economic damages for alleged loss of employment, loss of business opportunities, loss of wages and to compensate for injuries she said she suffered as a result of the alleged unlawful conduct.
