Music mogul Russell Simmons has been accused of rape by four women and additional “violent sexual behavior” by others who knew him professionally since the early 1980s, reports said Wednesday.
The women include an executive at his Def Jam record label, a music journalist and a singer he managed, according to a report in the New York Times.
Def Jam exec Drew Dixon said she was forced to sit on Simmons’ lap during meetings and that he exposed himself to her “regularly,” the paper said.
Dixon said she was raped by Simmons in his downtown office and she quit the label soon after.
Journalist Toni Sallie said she briefly dated Simmons in 1987. He later lured her to his Manhattan apartment, where he “pushed me on the bed” and raped her in the fall of 1988, she said.
Pop singer Tina Baker said Simmons once pinned her to a bed and raped her in the early ’90s, when he was her manager.
Simmons denied all the allegations, saying the “horrific accusations have shocked me to my core and all of my relations have been consensual.”
Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Times reported other allegations of sexual assault against the mogul.
Sherri Hines, of a 1980s all-female hip-hop group, said Simmons raped her in his office around 1983 when she was 17 or 18 years old.
“The next thing I knew, he was pinning me down and I was trying to fight him and he had his way,” she told the paper about the encounter. “I left crying.”
A woman named Lisa Kirk told the paper that Simmons attacked her in the bathroom of a Manhattan nightclub in 1988.
Actress Natashia Williams-Blach — who appeared in a Simmons-produced film — said he tried to force her to perform oral sex on him after a yoga class in 1996 when she was 18.
A massage therapist named Erin Beattie alleges that Simmons exposed himself and asked her to touch his penis while she was giving him a massage in 2005.
In response to the LA Times story, Simmons said: “While there are many women with whom I have shared extraordinary relationships, whether through work or love, I regret with my whole heart any conduct that has led anyone to say or think of me in the ways that are currently being written.”
The hip-hop pioneer had stepped down from his company last month amid allegations of misconduct from two women, including screenwriter Jenny Lumet.