Nicki Minaj, 38, and Kenneth Petty, 43, are being sued and facing serious accusations by a woman he sexually assaulted over 20 years ago. The rapper and her husband are the subject of a new lawsuit that was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York by a woman who is publicly identifying herself as Jennifer Hough. In the court documents, which were obtained and read by HollywoodLife, Jennifer is accusing the couple of “harassing and intimidating” her — she claims they contacted her and her family to try and get her to take back her rape claim against Kenneth. Jennifer even accuses Nicki of bribing her at one point.
HollywoodLife reached out to Nicki’s rep for a comment, but we have yet to receive a response.
Before the lawsuit was filed, Kenneth was arrested last year when he failed to register as a sex offender in California over a rape case. In the suit’s documents, Jennifer says that one day after his arrest, she was contacted by a childhood friend and it led to a conversation about the rape. After she told the friend that she “wished it could all just go away forever,” the friend offered to help and Nicki allegedly then called Jennifer a few days later, the suit said.
The Pink Friday creator allegedly told Jennifer that she could have her publicist draft a statement that recanted the rape claim, but she declined, the suit explains. “Within days of this conversation, Plaintiff and her family suffered an onslaught of harassing calls and unsolicited visits,” the suit further states.
The lawsuit also claims that Nicki allegedly offered Jennifer’s family members $500,000 if she took back the rape accusation, and on another occasion, Jennifer was allegedly offered $20,000 if she signed an already prepared document retracting her claims about Kenneth. In addition to the money, Nicki allegedly offered to send happy birthday videos to Jennifer’s teenage daughter as “a bonus,” the suit said.
Jennifer’s accusations about Kenneth are also included in the lawsuit documents. In them, she accuses him of sexually assaulting her at a home in Queens, New York on Sept. 16, 1994. The lawsuit states that a 16-year-old Kenneth allegedly grabbed Jennifer, who was also 16 at the time, when she was standing at a bus stop while on her way to school. He then allegedly put a knife to her back and told her to “start walking” before taking her to a nearby house and raping her, the suit states.
Jennifer claims she was able to then run from the house and tell a high school security guard what happened and Kenneth was later arrested at the house, the suit went on. Despite the arrest, Jennifer said she was repeatedly intimidated and harassed by people in the neighborhood due to the situation and her own family even allegedly began to “turn on her” because they feared Kenneth, the suit says. The reactions caused Jennifer to try and have the charges against Kenneth dropped but it was denied and Kenneth ended up accepting a plea deal in the case and served almost four years in prison.