Music mogul denies ‘horrific accusations’
NEW YORK — Three women have told the New York Times that music mogul Russell Simmons raped them, the latest in a cascade of allegations of sexual misconduct against powerful men in entertainment, media, politics and elsewhere.
Simmons vehemently denied what he called “these horrific accusations,” saying “all of my relations have been consensual.”
The allegations reported by the Times on Wednesday stem from the 1980s and 1990s. One woman, Drew Dixon, said Simmons assaulted her in his downtown apartment in 1995, when she was an executive at Def Jam Recordings, reporting to Simmons. She quit Def Jam soon after, she told the Times, saying, “I was broken.”
Through his lawyer, Simmons acknowledged to the newspaper that he engaged in “inappropriate conduct” with Dixon while she worked at Def Jam. But he “emphatically states that he did not have sex with her,” his lawyer said.
Another, Tina Baker, said Simmons raped her in the early ’90s, when he was her manager.
“I didn’t sing for almost a year,” Baker was quoted as saying.
Through his lawyer, Simmons told the Times he had “no recollection of ever having any sexual relations with Ms. Baker.”
A third, Toni Sallie, a music journalist, dated Simmons briefly in 1987. A year later, in 1988, Simmons invited her to his Manhattan apartment for a party, she told the Times, but when she arrived she was the only one there, and Simmons led her to his bedroom, pushed her on the bed and raped her.
“We were fighting. I said no,” she was quoted as saying.
The Times said that Simmons, through his lawyer, acknowledged he had dated Sallie but denied non-consensual sex.
In each case, the paper said, friends and associates of the accusers said they had been told of the incidents at the time.
Simmons said he would “relentlessly fight against any untruthful character assassination that paints me as a man of violence.”