Global superstar Onika “Nicki Minaj” Maraj-Petty and her husband, Kenneth Petty, have been accused of intimidating and harassing Jennifer Hough, a woman that Petty was convicted of sexually assaulting more than 20 years ago.
The lawsuit revolves around interactions between Hough and Petty that took place on September 16, 1994. Court documents assert that Hough was walking to school when Petty grabbed her, threatened her with a knife and told her to keep walking. Petty allegedly guided her to a nearby home in Queens as Hough “began pleading for her life.” Despite her pleas, Hough says that Petty sexually assaulted her.
“I am the man, I am the man,” Petty said after the encounter, according to court documents.
Hough then fled the home and contacted a security guard at her school. Not long thereafter, Petty was arrested at the home.
After Petty’s arrest, Hough claims that his associates began to harass her and her family, causing people “to turn on her.” From there, she says that her family convinced her to go to court and ask that the charges against Petty be dropped. However, a judge denied her request, Petty accepted a plea deal and served nearly half of a decade in prison.
Fast forward more than 20 years, Petty was arrested in 2020 when he allegedly failed to register as a sex offender in California. After his arrest, Hough claims that Maraj-Petty contacted her and asked her to issue a formal statement recanting her accusation that Petty sexually assaulted her. Also, Hough claims that the best-selling artist and her husband offered her upwards of $20,000 to recant her 1994 accusation. Not to mention, the lawsuit asserts that Minaj offered to send happy birthday videos to Hough’s teenage daughter “as a bonus.”
“Plaintiff could not believe that Defendant Minaj would go this far to bribe her,” the lawsuit states.
“They did a whole bunch of things to this woman probably within a 7 months span that most people would not be able to endure. She moved three times. She changed her phone number three times. She did everything that she possibly could to avoid these people and yet they wanted her to say her true life experience was a lie,” Hough’s attorney, Tyrone A. Blackburn, added.
Petty has not issued a public statement regarding the matter.
