Rapper Soulja Boy has been ordered to pay his former assistant practically $4 million after he was discovered liable by a California jury in a lawsuit she filed in 2021, alleging the star sexually assaulted her and held her captive.
Soulja Boy’s accuser, who’s recognized solely as Jane Doe, was awarded simply over $4 million in compensatory damages on Thursday, April 10, 4 years after she sued him for allegedly violently attacking her. A second section of the trial will now decide punitive damages.
“The district lawyer by no means filed fees. I used to be by no means charged or convicted of this, criminally,” the rapper informed Rolling Stone. “So, to be accused of this civilly is past me. I’ve by no means completed any of the issues they’re accusing me of. I simply really feel like that is very unfair.”
Soulja Boy (né DeAndre Cortez Manner) was sued by the lady in January 2021 after he allegedly assaulted her and didn’t pay her for her work as his private assistant, amongst different accusations.
In line with her criticism, which was obtained by ipromiseyoumedia, Doe started working for the “Kiss Me through the Cellphone” rapper, 34, in December 2018 below the settlement that she’d obtain $500 every week for her providers, which included cleansing, cooking and extra.
Lower than a month later, Doe says Soulja started sending “unsolicited footage of his penis,” and although they began a quick consensual romantic relationship, it quickly turned violent, the lawsuit alleges.
Within the criticism, Doe lists quite a lot of alleged cases during which he harmed her, together with one event during which he punched her within the head so exhausting she “misplaced consciousness,” and one other in August 2020 when he attacked her “so exhausting that she thought she was going to die.”
Her criticism additionally accuses the rapper of locking her in her room with out sizzling water for 3 days, and of sexually assaulting her “on quite a few events.”
The lady beforehand reported the alleged abuse to the Ventura County Sheriff’s Workplace in December 2020, although the company informed Rolling Stone a number of months later that it declined to file fees towards Soulja attributable to “inadequate proof.”
“We’re completely happy our shopper was vindicated and the jury believed her claims of bodily and sexual assault,” Doe’s lawyer Ron Zambrano mentioned in a press release on Thursday. “We’re trying ahead to transferring on to the punitive damages section of the case.”
In the event you or somebody you recognize has been sexually assaulted, please contact the Nationwide Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673) or go to rainn.org.