The alleged rape victim who accused Nicki Minaj’s husband Kenneth Petty of raping her in 1994 has submitted new evidence from the case with the Queens County Supreme Court, according to a new report in The Daily Beast.
In court documents filed Friday, Jennifer Hough’s attorney, Tyrone Blackburn, said that the victim initially requested records from the case, but “due to the age of the requested records, the Queens District Attorney’s Office took a long time to retrieve, review, redact, and produce the records.”
The alleged incident took place in 1994 when both Hough and Petty were 16. In newly submitted documents, photographs show injuries to Hough’s face, neck and sides in addition to a laboratory analysis stating two vaginal smears tested “positive for the presence of spermatozoa.” The report also shows that a pair of “checker shorts” retrieved from Petty the day the alleged rape took place “were positive for the presence of spermatozoa.”
At the time of the trial following the assault, Petty pleaded guilty to attempted rape in the first degree.
“These are things that in a normal context would be ‘he said, she said,’” Blackburn told The Daily Beast. “Now you have the photos to prove it. And she made these statements without the benefit of having these documents to revert back to—so clearly, her trauma is very real.”
Furthermore, Hough told the publication that she “just wanted to show proof that I didn’t lie on this man. I did exactly what I was supposed to do. When it happened, I went to the police. I went to the hospital. I had a rape kit done.”
The New York State’s sex offender registry states that Petty was convicted of attempted rape in the first degree in 1995 for the incident the year before. At the time of the alleged rape, a complaint filed stated that Petty sexually assaulted her at knifepoint in his bedroom. She was eventually able to escape by throwing a bottle at his head.
“At the time, Hough said, she did not have any adults in her family to advise her or to accompany her to the hospital after the alleged assault. (Back in 2021, a childhood friend of Hough’s confirmed to The Daily Beast that they’d picked up Hough from the hospital.)” according to the report.
“I had no kind of guidance at all in my corner,” Hough said. “So I went through that by myself.”
It was in 2020 when Hough spoke out about the allegations. She alleged that “third parties connected to Petty had begun pressuring her to recant her story through bribes and threats.”
On November 22, 2021, a declaration was filed claiming that the encounter between Petty and Hough was consensual. “I did not force Plaintiff into a house, I did not force Plaintiff to have sex with me and I did not sexually or physically assault Plaintiff in any way. Nor did I ever threaten Plaintiff,” the filing reads. “I pled guilty to attempted rape, despite my innocence, because I was a scared 16-year-old kid and was told that my sentence would be 20 years to life if I did not plead guilty to attempted rape.”
He further denies he ever harassed Hough. Meanwhile, a status report Hough’s legal team filed in May said both parties were unable to settle during mediations.
“The case has now entered discovery with a fact-finding deadline set for Dec. 12, according to the case’s docket report,” the report concludes. “An in-person status conference is set for Sept. 27.”
