Music mogul Russell Simmons was accused of raping three women who came forward to share their stories about the alleged attacks.
The women spoke on the record about Simmons’ alleged assaults with incidents spanning from 1998 to as recently as 2014.
Drew Dixon told The New York Times that she was 24 and working for Def Jam records when Simmons allegedly raped her in his downtown Manhattan apartment.
“I was broken,” she said about the alleged attack.
Tina Baker said Simmons raped her in the early 1990s when he was her manager. She said he had often invited her to his apartment, so she willingly went there.
“It all got really ugly, pretty fast,” she said and described a “scuffle.” She told the paper she remember “him on top of me, pushing me down and him saying, ‘Don’t fight me. I did nothing, I shut my eyes and waited for it to end.”
Baker said the attack destroyed her. “I didn’t sing for almost a year,” she said. “I went into oblivion.”
Toni Sallie, a music journalist met Simmons and began dating him. She broke up with him but they remained friends. She told the NY Times that he invited her to a party at his Manhattan apartment but attacked her while giving her a tour.
“He pushed me on the bed and jumped on top of me, and physically attacked me,” she explained about the alleged rape. “We were fighting. I said no.” Three people confirmed to the paper that she told them about the attack.
Sallie explained why she did not report the alleged rape.
“If I went to the police, I didn’t know how that would turn out,” she said. “You have to understand, I was very much in a man’s game. Black women were just starting to break into the field.”
Simmons “acknowledged that he dated Ms. Sallie but denied any nonconsensual sex,” through his attorney, the NY Times said.
Simmons “emphatically states that he did not have sex with her [Drew Dixon],” his lawyer said.
Dixon told the New York Times that Simmons apologized to her at an industry event.
“He said, ‘I have daughters and I do yoga now, Drew, and I know what I did was wrong, and I’m sorry.’”
Simmons also released a statement about the other accusations in the NYT story, saying: “I vehemently deny all these allegations. These horrific accusations have shocked me to my core and all of my relations have been consensual. I have enormous respect for the women’s movement worldwide and their struggle for respect, dignity, equality and power.”
