Nicki Minaj and her husband, Kenneth Petty, are facing a lawsuit in connection to Petty’s attempted rape conviction in 1995.
According to a report from TMZ on Friday (Aug. 13), Nicki and her husband are being sued by a woman named Jennifer Hough, 43, for allegedly harassing and threatening Hough directly and indirectly in an effort to prevent her from speaking on the rape case. The woman has also accused the couple of causing her emotional distress in the lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York today.
Hough is suing the New York City-bred couple for intentional infliction of emotional distress, harassment and witness intimidation. She has filed a legal complaint in connection to Kenneth Petty’s 1995 attempted rape conviction as well, suing him for the sexual assault.
Back in 1994, Petty was charged with first-degree rape, after Hough reported to police that Petty, a 16-year-old she knew from Jamaica, Queens, had raped her after leading her into a home at knifepoint. A year later, Petty was convicted of first-degree attempted rape, resulting in him having to register as a sex offender. He also recently struck a plea deal in the case after failing to register as a sex offender in the state of California, where he lives with his rapper wife.
Based on the court documents, when Nicki Minaj began dating Kenneth Petty in 2018, she allegedly spoke openly about Petty being “wrongly accused” and claimed that Hough had retracted her story about the attempted sexual assault, which Hough denies.
When Petty was arrested in March of 2020 for failing to register as a sex offender in California, Hough alleges that Nicki called and offered to fly the woman and her family to Los Angeles in exchange for recanting the rape claims made against the Queens, N.Y. native’s husband, which would presumably benefit his case.
Hough reportedly declined the offer and days later, her family “suffered an onslaught of harassing calls and unsolicited visits.” Then, the woman claims Nicki Minaj had unnamed people contact Hough’s brother, offering $500,000 for her to disavow the rape allegations made against Petty.
Nicki Minaj allegedly went a step further, according to Hough, and sent lawyers to her home to strong-arm her into renouncing her claims against Kenneth Petty. As a result, Hough began to worry and felt her safety was in jeopardy due to the harassment she was experiencing at her home.
Nicki Minaj and Kenneth Petty reportedly bribed Hough once more with $20,000 in cash. Another additional threat was made to her safety as well.
Since the news emerged of the lawsuit, people have been weighing in on social media.
One person tweeted, “Let’s never forget Nicki tried to paint the victim as white to make it a case of a downtrodden innocent black man, and lied and said it was about statutory rape when it was rape with a weapon…. the red flags have BEEN THERE.”
Another wrote on Twitter, “The issue with Nicki is that she chose full and unconditional loyalty to her husband and it came at the cost of morality. Instead of accepting her husband’s wrongdoings and holding him accountable, she chose to be complicit in covering it up to clear his already damaged image.”
A third person typed, “Imagine your title as queen of rap being tainted because you wanna defend a predator and harass a victim. nicki will be her own downfall.”
XXL has reached out to a rep for Nicki Minaj and Kenneth Petty’s attorney for a comment.
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