BY: Walker
Published 19 hours ago
Soulja Boy was hit with a $4 million tab in the verdict of his sexual battery lawsuit, and he’s looking to fight back with an appeal.
He was found liable by a California jury in a lawsuit she filed in 2021, alleging the star sexually assaulted her and held her captive.
Soulja Boy’s accuser, who is identified only as Jane Doe, was awarded just over $4 million in compensatory damages on Thursday, April 10, four years after she sued him for allegedly violently attacking her. A second phase of the trial will now determine punitive damages.
“The district attorney never filed charges. I was never charged or convicted of this, criminally,” the rapper told Rolling Stone. “So, to be accused of this civilly is beyond me. I’ve never done any of the things they’re accusing me of. I just feel like this is very unfair.”
In a statement to PEOPLE, the star’s attorney said his team maintains “that the evidence does not support the verdict.”
“It is unfortunate that aspersions and misperceptions of a culture were allowed to influence the trial,” the statement read. “Mr. Way fully intends to pursue his post-trial remedies and to fight for a just result in this case.”
Soulja Boy (né DeAndre Cortez Way) was sued by the woman in January 2021 after he allegedly assaulted her and failed to pay her for her work as his personal assistant, among other accusations.
According to her complaint, which was obtained by PEOPLE, Doe began working for the “Kiss Me thru the Phone” rapper, 34, in December 2018 under the agreement that she’d receive $500 a week for her services, which included cleaning, cooking and more.
Less than a month later, Doe says Soulja began sending “unsolicited pictures of his penis,” and though they started a brief consensual romantic relationship, it soon turned violent, the lawsuit alleges.
In the complaint, Doe lists a number of alleged instances in which he harmed her, including one occasion in which he punched her in the head so hard she “lost consciousness,” and another in August 2020 when he attacked her “so hard that she thought she was going to die.”
Her complaint also accuses the rapper of locking her in her room without hot water for three days, and of sexually assaulting her “on numerous occasions.”
The woman previously reported the alleged abuse to the Ventura County Sheriff’s Office in December 2020, though the agency told Rolling Stone several months later that it declined to file charges against Soulja due to “insufficient evidence.”
“We’re happy our client was vindicated and the jury believed her claims of physical and sexual assault,” Doe’s attorney Ron Zambrano said in a statement on Thursday. “We’re looking forward to moving on to the punitive damages phase of the case.”
via: People
