Sheri Sher, one of the dozens of women who stepped forward to accuse former def Jam executive Russell Simmons of sexual assault, has spoken out about her experience in a new, candid interview.
“That’s the day that the incident happened. He told me he was gonna show me the Rush Production office while she interviewed Kurtis… I figured I was going up there and he was gonna tell me why he did us so dirty. It was painful and hurtful to my mom, everybody. He started talking and said, ‘You know, that’s just business,'” she told The JasmineBRAND.
It was then that Simmons allegedly violated her.
“Next thing I know, I’m just gonna make this really fast. I was pinned down to the couch… I’ll never forget there was a lamp there and I was trying to grab that lamp. It was kind of weird cause I’m from The Bronx, I grew up fighting; especially as Mercedes Ladies. We had to fight for our right as females to be heard. But I’m sitting there, I’m trying to grab this thing, he’s on top of me…”
Sher was one of several accusers who contributed to HBO’s “On The Record” documentary, where she also recounted the alleged attack.
Simmons denies all allegations against him and has worked hard to discredit his accusers, claiming that all encounters were consensual.
But Sher’s vivid retelling of the alleged account is hard to dismiss. She fled from the Rush Production office to her friend, who was waiting at the bottom of the elevator for her.
“He violated me. Like totally, took what he wanted. She’s begging me to call the police, begging me to call my mom, and I just couldn’t do it. I said to her ‘You’re from Long Island, you don’t understand this culture.'”
Sher says she later ran into Simmons when he was at Def Jam, where he allegedly offered up thinly veiled threats.
“I ran into him and he said, ‘Yeah I know you wrote a book and I know there’s some sh*t in there.’ And I said ‘You should be glad, it’s some sh*t in there. You should be counting your blessings because in my mind, I could’ve blew you up, and maybe you wouldn’t have been in Def Jam. He gave me his number and told me to call him. I didn’t call him. In my mind, I was like, I never showed emotions… That’s just the way I was raised.”
Following the debut of “On The Record,” Simmons headed to The Breakfast Club to decry the documentary, slamming it as “toxic femininity.”
“I really don’t think we should be relitigating 30-year-old stories that had never been told,” Simmons said.
