A jury in Santa Monica slapped rapper Soulja Boy with a judgment of $ 4 million Thursday after having found him responsible for the civil court for the sexual assault and the battery of a woman who lived at her home and said that she was her assistant.
The 34 -year -old rapper, whose real name is Deandre Cortez Way, smiles calmly while the verdict was read, according to Information Service of the courthouse. The judgment only concerned compensatory damages; The determination of punitive damages is still to come.
“We are happy that our client was justified and the jury believed that his allegations of physical and sexual assault,” said lawyer Ron Zambrano, partner with employment lawyers in the west coast, in a statement obtained by Times. “We are impatient to go to the phase of punitive damages of the case.”
Way denied all complaints against him.
“We argue that evidence does not support the verdict,” said his lawyer, Rickey IVie of IVie McNeill Wyatt Purcell & Diggs, in a press release in Times. “It is regrettable that the erroneous sponsorships and perceptions of a culture have been authorized to influence the trial. Mr. Way fully intends to continue his remedies after the trial and to fight for a fair result in this case. ”
The case was brought by an accuser of Jane Doe in January 2021, and the trial began in March in Santa Monica, according to the judicial archives.
The jury eliminated the rapper's “crank” on the allegations of false imprisonment and constructive release – an allegation that he created a working environment so hostile that the employee had to leave – while finding him responsible for civil allegations, including sexual drums, assaults and sex violence.
Doe said she was hired as a personal assistant to the rapper in December 2018, according to the trial brought by the Los Angeles County Superior Court. The file allegedly allegedly allegedly, from January 23, 2019 to December 23, 2020, Way inflicted “serious physical and sexual injuries” in the DOE and was “scary for his life”.
Doe said that in court documents examined by the Times, he had been promised $ 500 per week but was never paid, despite the Ways auction seven days a week, 20 hours a day. Shortly after the start of his job, said the file, a romantic relationship developed between the two and the abuses quickly followed. The trial accused how to strike Doe and rape it several times.
Testifying during the trial, Way – which was accused of sexual drums, false imprisonment, neglect and aggression, plus a handful of violations of the labor code – denied having violated or defeating the doe, according to the courtthouse News Service, and said that she was never his employee but he had rather stayed at home frequently and rolled marijuana blunts for him.
Her lawyer declared in her closing argument that she had obtained “place and pension” for her efforts, which he called “standard of industry,” said the point of sale.
For three days of testimony, Doe said that she “did not even feel human anymore. I felt like an animal,” reported Courthouse News. She said she had stayed because he had threatened to harm her and publicly publish a video he had recorded with her oral sex.
Text messages have shown that it had to perform tasks that are generally carried out by an assistant, including travel taking and obtaining food. In a message sent after an alleged attack, Way wrote: “I should have killed you,” said the trial.
The trial will continue with the determination of punitive damages.
