Hip-hop pioneer Afrika Bambaataa, who was accused in 2016 of molesting a 15-year-old in 1980, is being sued for sex trafficking by a man who says he was just 12 years old at the time of the abuse, according to Pitchfork. Pitchfork has obtained documents filed New York State Supreme Court on August 4 on behalf of the anonymous accuser claiming that from 1991-1995, Bambaataa repeatedly abused him and arranged for him to be abused by other adult men. Bambaataa would have been around 33 at the time the alleged abuse began.
The lawsuit was filed under New York’s 2019 Child Victims Act allowing victims of sexual abuse to sue their abusers past the statute of limitations of the crimes themselves. In this case, the accuser, a Bronx native identified in the documents as John Doe, says Bambaataa “repeatedly sexually abused and sex trafficked” him beginning at the Bronx River Houses public housing project, where both lived at the time.
The suit claims Bambaataa “eventually began to inappropriately touch [Doe] in his private areas while [Doe] was in [Bambaataa’s apartment],” then eventually encouraged [Doe] to watch pornographic videos while in [Bambaataa]’s apartment,” eventually progressing to trafficking as “[Bambaataa] would transport [Doe] to other locations and offer [him] for sex to other adult men. During said encounters [Bambaataa] would watch as [Doe] was sodomized by other adult men.”
The suit claims John Doe has suffered “physical injury, severe and permanent emotional distress, mental anguish, depression and embarrassment,” and charges assault, civil battery, intentional infliction of emotional distress, negligent infliction of emotional distress, and gross negligence. Bambaataa has yet to respond to the lawsuit as of press time; however, after being accused of similar charges by Ronald Savage in 2016, he issued a statement denying the accusations. Three other men came forward in the weeks thereafter, prompting Bambaataa to step down from his role as leader of the Zulu Nation awareness organization.
The Nation is also named in the current lawsuit, but through a statement to Metropolis, distanced themselves from the embattled hip-hop pioneer. “Nothing has changed since 2016 when these decades-ago accusations first surfaced,” it reads. “This is a personal matter for Afrika Bambaataa and his lawyers to deal with.”
