Russell Simmons has adamantly denied damning allegations that emerged from a November Los Angeles Times report, but according to Simmons accuser Keri Claussen Khalighi (who said Simmons made aggressive sexual advances towards her when she was 17), Simmons had already apologized in private before his public declaration of innocence.
Khalighi sat down (via video link-up) on Megyn Kelly Today to detail her alleged assault by Simmons and producer/director Brett Ratner’s active inaction as this behavior occurred. Simmons has insisted that Khalighi participated consensually in their encounter.
When asked by Kelly how she reacted to Simmons’ advances, Khalighi stressed that is was obvious she wanted nothing to do with them.
“It’s very apparent when somebody doesn’t want an advance to happen.” she told Kelly and her morning show audience.
Khalighi recalls directly presenting her body as”closed.” She considered seeking help from Brett Ratner at that moment, but found he wasn’t someone she could trust upon seeing his face.
“This was their plan all along,” she said. “There was no help that was gonna come.”
According to Khalighi, Simmons’ public dismissal of the claims against him doesn’t sync up with what’s been going on in private conversations. Here’s a key portion that THR pulled:
I almost don’t even want to speak against that because it’s ludicrous,” she added, mentioning, what she told the Times, that she’s spoken with Simmons about the encounter both in person and over the phone, where, she told Kelly, there was “no dispute of what we were talking about. We were both talking about what happened on that night, and he actually apologized.”
“Part of what’s so confusing and re-traumatizing is what he’s speaking about privately with me is completely different from what’s come out publicly,” she said, calling the discrepancy, “repugnant with the hypocrisy, the lies and the denial.”
Khalighi says she’s using this experience to push progress forward.
“If I can use my experience to further this conversation and facilitate change,” she told Megyn Kelly. “I am bound and determined to make this environment safer and more empowered for my daughters and for the sons and daughters of future generations.”
(Via The Hollywood Reporter)
