Los Angeles police reportedly investigating T.I. and wife Tiny over sexual assault allegations
Content warning: the following story contains descriptions of sexual assault.
Rapper T.I. – real name Clifford Harris – and his wife Tameka “Tiny” Harris are reportedly under investigation by the Los Angeles Police Department over allegations of sexual assault and drugging.
The Daily Beast and The New York Times report that LAPD have an active investigation into the couple after a woman, whose identity is being kept anonymous, met detectives in April over an alleged assault in 2005.
The Daily Beast reports that the woman alleges she was invited to a club where T.I. and Tiny were, where she claimed to have a sip of Tiny’s drink of Patron. She claims she and other women at the club were invited to the couple’s hotel room, where T.I. allegedly penetrated her vagina with his toes without her consent.
The woman allegedly told T.I. “no” before throwing up in the bathroom. She said her last memory was sitting down on the couch before waking up the following morning with “her vagina very sore and had a burning/itching sensation”.
Another police report was filed earlier this month by another individual in Las Vegas, The Daily Beast said. The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department has since told the Times that this alleged incident, which took place in 2010, fell outside the statute of imitations for the crime, and the case was closed as a result.
T.I. and Tiny are facing multiple allegations of sexual abuse and coercion, which they have both denied since the claims first emerged in January. In a statement issued to Pitchfork, T.I. and Tiny’s lawyer Steve Sadow said that the couple “have not spoken to or been contacted by the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), the Las Vegas Police Department (LVPD) or, indeed, any member of law enforcement from any other jurisdiction in the country”.
Sadow added, “Even assuming the story in the Daily Beast is close to accurate, it appears the LAPD ‘accuser’ has chosen once again to remain anonymous, thereby preventing us from being in a position to disprove or refute her allegations—or even examine them.
“Meanwhile, although we now appear for the first time to have the name of an ‘accuser’ who supposedly filed a police report with LVPD, we have absolutely zero details about her or her claim.”
The unnamed woman is being represented by lawyer Tyrone A. Blackburn, who is representing a total of 11 alleged sexual assault victims of T.I. and Tiny. In February, it was reported that Blackburn had contacted multiple state and federal prosecutors, seeking a criminal investigation against the pair.
The following month, Blackburn said that six more people had come forward to him with allegations of sexual assault against T.I. and Tiny. “If I was a prosecutor, I’d have brought charges already,” he said.
Blackburn is also representing the couple’s former friend, Sabrina Peterson, who made the first allegations of sexual abuse and coercion in January against T.I. and Tiny.
Peterson had shared excerpts from conversations purportedly between herself and more than a dozen women on Instagram, which claimed that visitors were required to consume illicit drugs before entering T.I. and Tiny’s home. The conversations also alleged sexual abuse and coercion.
T.I. and Tiny “emphatically” denied Peterson’s allegations in a subsequent statement. In February, the pair’s lawyer further called the allegations “baseless and unjustified”.