Soulja Boy testified in his personal protection Tuesday at a civil trial in California, telling jurors he “by no means” assaulted the girl who claims he beat, raped, and held her against her will whereas she lived with him as a private assistant beginning in 2019.
The rapper, whose actual title is DeAndre Cortez Manner, vehemently denied the graphic and harrowing testimony that the girl gave March 19 when she first took the stand within the trial now underway in Santa Monica. The lady, who sued below a Jane Doe pseudonym, instructed jurors that Manner allegedly first raped her in a rest room throughout a police raid of his residence in mid-February 2019. She claimed he went on to commonly beat, berate, and sexually assault her throughout a tortured, two-year relationship that typically concerned consensual intimacy.
Manner, 34, admitted Tuesday that there was a sexual encounter with the girl when police confirmed up on the door of his $25,000-a-month rental residence to serve the search warrant. However he claimed she consented. “I requested her if she wished to have intercourse, and she or he was engaged in it,” he stated. “She didn’t push me or say cease, nothing like that.”
Protection lawyer Rickey Ivie later walked Manner via the months that adopted Manner’s launch from jail on July 14, 2019. Manner stated that after he was locked up for 3 months on a weapons-related probation violation, he was comfortable to see Doe and invited her to dwell with him at a unique home as his intimate accomplice.
“Did you ever hit the plaintiff within the mouth, bust her lip, and power her to present you oral intercourse?” Ivie requested on the tenth day of the trial.
“In fact not, and that’s a disgusting allegation,” Manner responded. “It sounds loopy to me. I didn’t try this.”
Manner began his testimony briefly final week when he was known as by the Jane Doe as a hostile witness. He gave principally one-word solutions throughout that examination by Dean Aynechi, a accomplice at West Coast Trial Attorneys. Requested final week if he employed the girl to be his private assistant, Manner stated no, she was by no means his worker. Aynechi then confronted Manner with a video that confirmed him procuring on Rodeo Drive in late January 2019 and calling out for his “assistant.”
“You began yelling, ‘The place’s [Doe]? The place’s my assistant?’ And she or he ran up behind you together with your bag, together with your procuring,” Aynechi stated. Requested if that precisely described the video, Manner stated, “Sure.”
On Tuesday, Ivie requested Manner why he known as the girl his assistant in public that day. Manner claimed it was as a result of he met her via a mutual good friend that very same month and had supplied her free room and board in change for her companies “rolling weed.”
“We had been in a public setting, and I didn’t need to consult with her as ‘blunt curler’ with cameras and other people round,” Manner stated of the Rodeo Drive video. “I assumed it extra applicable to name her ‘assistant.’”
Throughout Manner’s first activate the stand final week, Aynechi bombarded the rapper with textual content messages allegedly displaying the girl commonly made purchases for Manner in her capability as his private assistant. In a single textual content change, Manner berated the girl after he missed a flight. The lady responded by sending Manner display pictures of an apparently new airline boarding cross.
Testifying Tuesday, Manner claimed the girl was residing in his residence “rent-free” and typically supplied to do issues for him, voluntarily. The Jane Doe broke down crying as Manner denied ever sexually assaulting her. In her prior testimony relating to the February 2019 police raid, she instructed jurors that she was within the toilet with Manner when he allegedly spun her round, pulled down her pants, and “began having intercourse” along with her as she froze “in shock.” She stated she didn’t report the incident to the Ventura County sheriff’s deputies who raided the house as a result of she was “terrified” of Manner and his potential retaliation.
“I feared for my life,” Doe instructed the jury on the fourth day of the civil trial. She claimed Manner instructed her he knew the place her mom lived and had threatened to “ship shooters” to the home. “I used to be terrified of what he would do to my household. I didn’t need him to harm anyone due to me,” she testified.
As she wiped tears, the girl claimed Manner known as her merciless names, withheld meals, locked her in rooms, and would spit on the ground simply to observe her clear it up. Doe alleged she was so determined for meals at one level, she begged gardeners to convey her instantaneous noodles. She dropped from 140 kilos right down to 86 kilos, she testified. “I didn’t even really feel human anymore. I felt like an animal,” she stated. “I wished to die. I didn’t need to be there anymore. I simply wished to go residence.”
The lady reported her alleged abuse to police in December 2020. Prosecutors within the Ventura County District Lawyer’s Workplace declined to file any legal prices. “In April 2021, after a radical evaluation of the investigation carried out by Ventura County Sheriff’s Workplace detectives, the Ventura County District Lawyer’s Workplace declined to file prices on account of inadequate proof to show the alleged crimes true past an inexpensive doubt,” a D.A. spokesperson instructed Rolling Stone.
The present trial began March 13 and is predicted to achieve closing arguments by Thursday. Doe, who filed her underlying lawsuit in January 2021, is suing Manner with claims he subjected her to sexual battery, assault, false imprisonment, emotional misery, unpaid additional time, and a hostile work surroundings. She claims Manner punched her within the head on at the very least 10 separate events. The lady alleges one incident was so brutal that she misplaced consciousness and wakened in a locked room with no meals or water.
Manner, who shot to worldwide fame together with his 2007 viral hit “Crank That (Soulja Boy),” has additionally been accused of bodily and sexual assault by former girlfriends Kayla Myers and mannequin Nia Riley, the daughter of musician Teddy Riley. Manner appeared on the fact exhibits Love & Hip Hop: Hollywood and Marriage Boot Camp with Riley.
In 2021, Riley sat down with YouTube gossip vlogger TashaK and claimed Way threatened her with a gun and kicked her within the abdomen whereas she was pregnant, inflicting her to undergo a miscarriage. A lawsuit filed by a Jane Doe in May 2021 mirrors the allegations made publicly by Riley. That case resulted in a default judgment that Manner is now disputing.
In a separate lawsuit, Myers claimed she had a romantic relationship with Manner that ended when the rapper allegedly held a gun to her head, threatened her life, and assaulted her at his residence on Feb. 1, 2019. A civil courtroom jury found Way liable for the assault and kidnapping of Myers at a trial.
