Three ladies who’ve accused Russell Simmons of sexual assault say the hip-hop mogul has didn’t pay them almost $8 million to settle confidential agreements, in response to latest courtroom filings.
Tina Klein-Baker, Toni Sallie and Alexia Norton Jones acknowledged in filings this month with New York County Supreme Courtroom that Simmons had reneged on funds agreed upon as a part of confidential settlements that every of the ladies entered into individually with Simmons in 2023.
Simmons owes Baker $4.95 million, Sallie $3 million and Jones $200,000, in response to the filings, often called confessions of judgment.
Underneath the settlements, Simmons didn’t admit any wrongdoing, and the confidential agreements don’t explicitly state the ladies’s claims towards him. Sallie’s and Jones’ agreements say that the quantity to be paid every lady was for his or her “alleged private, bodily accidents and illness.”
The claims mark the newest allegations towards Simmons. Final 12 months, three different ladies — Sil Lai Abrams, Sherri Abernathy and Wendy Carolina Franco — filed related claims in New York towards Simmons, alleging he didn’t pay about $3 million as a part of confidential settlement agreements he reached with them in 2023.
Patricia Glaser, Simmons’ lawyer, didn’t reply to a request for remark.
In 2017, Simmons stepped down from Def Jam Data, which he co-founded, after a number of ladies publicly accused him of sexual assault, which he has repeatedly denied.
5 of the six ladies have publicly accused Simmons of sexual assault in beforehand revealed accounts. A few of them additionally participated within the documentary “On The File.”
Baker, a singer, accused Simmons of raping her within the early Nineteen Nineties when he was her supervisor, in response to a 2017 article within the New York Occasions.
Within the article, Sallie, a music journalist, alleged that Simmons raped her at a celebration in 1988, a 12 months after that they had briefly dated.
In 2018, Jones, then an aspiring mannequin, informed Selection that Simmons raped her in 1990 in his house after a date.
Simmons denied the claims by Baker, Sallie and Jones.
Simmons was the topic of a Los Angeles Occasions article in 2017 by which 5 ladies accused him of sexual misconduct that occurred over three a long time.
He denied the claims. “These new tales vary from the patently unfaithful to frivolous and hurtful claims,” he stated in an announcement to The Occasions. “I wish to restate categorically what I’ve stated beforehand: I’ve by no means been violent or abusive to any ladies in any means at any time in my complete life.”
In December 2023, Simmons appeared on an episode of “In Depth with Graham Bensinger” by which he stated he had a historical past of being in “compromising conditions,” however denied the claims towards him, saying that he had taken “9 lie detector checks.”
The interview appeared the identical 12 months by which he entered into the confidential agreements with the six ladies.
“Every of those ladies entered into settlement agreements with Simmons which might be binding contracts. His serial refusal to be sure by these agreements is outrageous,” stated Andrew Wilson, an lawyer representing Abrams, Abernathy and Franco.