Atlanta rapper TI, born Clifford Harris, was sued Tuesday, along with his wife, Tameka Harris, known as Tiny, by a woman who accused the couple of drugging and raping her after she met them at a nightclub. from Los Angeles around 2005.
In the lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court under California’s Sexual Abuse and Concealment Accountability Act, which extended the statute of limitations for sexual abuse claims, the woman is identified only as Jane Doe, a veteran of the US Air Force, who was then 22 or 23 years old. She previously gave her account of the alleged assault and its aftermath in an interview with The New York Times in 2021, when she spoke on condition of anonymity to protect her family.
In her lawsuit, the woman accuses Mr. Harris, 43, and Ms. Harris, 48, of sexual assault, sexual battery, negligence, false imprisonment and intentional infliction of emotional distress, and seeks damages and damages.
In a statement provided by a lawyer for the couple, Andrew B. Brettler, Mr. and Mrs. Harris denied the allegations and called the civil suit an extortion. “This plaintiff has been threatening to file this lawsuit for three years,” the statement said. “For three years we have emphatically and categorically denied these allegations. For three years we have maintained our innocence and have refused to pay these exorbitant demands for things we did not do.”
They added: “We are innocent of these false claims, we will not be shaken and we look forward to our day in court.”
Los Angeles prosecutors had previously declined to file criminal charges against the Harrises for this incident, citing the statute of limitations. “Without the strengths and weaknesses of the evidence being evaluated, the case is dismissed due to expiration,” Los Angeles County authorities wrote in a September 2021 charge evaluation filing.
That investigation came as numerous allegations of sexual abuse and assault against the couple emerged in news reports and on social media, and an attorney approached law enforcement authorities in California and Georgia seeking criminal investigations on behalf of 11 people who They said they were victims of the Harrises. or members of your environment. At least four women accused the celebrity couple of drugging and sexually assaulting them.
The couple denied the charges at the time and charges were never filed.
In her lawsuit, the military veteran says she was invited with a friend to the VIP section of a Los Angeles club to meet TI and Tiny, a member of the R&B group Xscape, by a member of the couple’s entourage, a man they knew. like caviar. . Harris, who was not yet married to T.I. at the time, offered the two women a drink and they both drank it, according to the lawsuit.
The two women were then invited, along with other people, to a hotel room, where they believed the party would continue; The military veteran traveled there with the celebrity couple and her friend traveled with Caviar.
At the hotel, the lawsuit says, the other guests were soon asked to leave, and the veteran was left alone with the couple, who proceeded to shower with her and began massaging her when she began to feel “extremely dizzy and lightheaded.” depending on the suit. “Plaintiff realized that she was experiencing something serious and debilitating that was not a symptom of a typical drink or a few drinks.”
The woman says she remembers being penetrated by Mr. Harris’s toes and telling him no, before she began vomiting and “passed out until the next morning,” according to the lawsuit. The woman woke up in pain, the lawsuit says, and was reunited with her friend, who had remained separated from her after they left the club.
In interviews with The Times in 2021, both women said they immediately told each other their memories of the previous night. Another old friend of the veteran, who spoke with her a few days after the events, confirmed in an interview that the veteran had described the experience at the hotel as a non-consensual act in which she had been drugged, and did not deviate from that story. when they discussed it in later years.
“Even after all these years, the shame, the shame, the depression, still lingers,” Rodney S. Diggs, the woman’s attorney, said in a statement Wednesday. “Silencing women silences justice. My client will no longer remain silent; “We now seek justice for her and all those who have been similarly violated.”
