It has been a trying Sagittarius season for several rappers. Both Lil Baby and JT‘s respective birthday weeks were marred by controversies. Now Nicki Minaj is celebrating her 38th birthday as troubling allegations against her and her partner spread across the internet.
Fellow female rapper and social media personality Khia took to Instagram to call out Minaj and her spouse, Kenneth “Zoo” Petty, for supposedly being involved in the harassment of an alleged rape victim. The self-described Thug Misses blasted Minaj (born Onika Tanya Maraj) for unsubstantiated reports that the couple tried to pay off the accuser to keep her silent about a violent attack from 1994.
“So Nicki Van D#### tried to pay PETTYPHILE victim off so he could get his charges dropped and get off the sex registry?” Khia posted to her @ahzookha Instagram account. The IG caption read, “PETTYPHILE Ass Should Be In Jail. Why Is Nick Van D#### Contacting The Victim On PETTYPHILE Behalf? Ooop.” Khia was referring to the unverified story that has gained traction on YouTube.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CIfICols5mt/
Kenneth Petty was convicted for attempted rape with a knife of a sixteen-year-old girl in 1995. Petty served four years in prison, and he was ordered to register as a sex offender in the state of New York. He also pled guilty to manslaughter charges in 2006 for the 2002 death of Lamont Robinson in an unrelated case which reportedly caused Petty to serve seven years in prison.
Earlier this year, Petty was indicted by a grand jury for failure to register as a sex offender in California. Those Los Angeles County charges were later dropped after he was officially added to the California database of sexual offenders, but Petty is still said to be facing federal charges for that criminal infraction.
Petty’s failure to register in California, and the media attention surrounding that particular court case, apparently led to someone claiming to be the person the now 42-year-old man raped 26 years ago to speak out in order to protect herself. In an anonymous 13-minute YouTube video, the woman suggested Minaj and Petty are initiating other individuals to harass her and her family.
“In March of 2020, I got a call from a mutual friend of Kenneth and my brother, and he said that he could connect me to them and make this go away. When he said he could connect me to them, meaning Nicki and Kenny, and when he said he could make this go away, I thought the agreement was going to be: if I don’t speak to anybody about them they wouldn’t speak to anybody about me. End of story. Well, that’s not what happened,” stated the woman.
She added, “What happened was this mutual person offered me $20,000 to write a letter stating that I lied about Kenny assaulting me. I didn’t want to do it. I got a phone call from Nicki Minaj herself saying she got word that I was willing to help them out in this [failing to register as a sex offender] situation… She said that she could send her publicist, Joe, out to where I was living at the time… After that phone call with Nicki, the only contact I had was from street goons.”
The woman also said that she was forcibly raped by Kenneth Petty, received little support from her own family at the time, and is now being threatened to change her story about the assault. She also blatantly denied Nicki Minaj’s Instagram comment from 2018 where the Queen album creator insisted Petty was “in a relationship” with the alleged victim at the time of the assault even though the New York State sex offender registry lists Petty’s “Relationship to Victim” as “None Reported.”
The alleged victim also said that she was never offered money directly from Nicki Minaj or Kenneth Petty. However, the woman claimed she was contacted by the United States Marshals Service because the law enforcement agency was supposedly aware she was facing harassment to recant her story about the 1994 sexual assault. Allegedly, she was offered the chance to enter the federal witness protection program.
While the woman has not been verified as Petty’s actual alleged victim, clips from the video, interviews with gossip-centered YouTubers, and a social media user claiming to be the alleged victim’s daughter have gone viral on YouTube and other social media platforms. As of press time, the woman has not shown her face or confirmed her full legal name.
Some observers believe Nicki reacted to the latest controversy involving her husband’s attempted rape conviction by jokingly tweeting “We did it joe” with a picture of Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris. That December 6 tweet was viewed by critics as a subtle reference to Joe Carozza, Executive Vice President of Media and Artist Relations for Republic Records, which is the label home of Nicki Minaj. The alleged victim named “Joe” as the publicist who purportedly wanted to meet with her in order to possibly change her story about Kenneth Petty assaulting her in 1994.
The love be fake, but the obsession be real.
— Nicki Minaj (@NICKIMINAJ) December 6, 2020
We did it joe pic.twitter.com/Y7HRYPgumg
— Nicki Minaj (@NICKIMINAJ) December 7, 2020