Soulja Boy accuser testifies to months of rape, captivity on the stand of civil trial

LOS ANGELES (CN) — A woman suing Soulja Boy for sexual assault gave harrowing testimony on Wednesday about months of abuse at the hands of the rapper, including physical violence, rape and forced imprisonment.

“I wanted to die,” the woman said, sobbing. “I didn’t want to be there anymore. I just wanted to go home.”

The 36-year-old woman, who filed her complaint under the alias “Jane Doe,” testified that she had worked for many years on the lower rung of the hip-hop recording industry.

She had been assistant at Young Money Entertainment, a record label founded by Lil Wayne. She later worked as an assistant for another well-known rapper, an employment which ended abruptly after the rapper started having sex with her while she was asleep, she told the jury. She then went to work for Mally Mall, a record producer, whom she was also living with.

Then, in 2018, she met DeAndre Cortez Way, better known as Soulja Boy. The rapper is best known for the 2007 hit single “Crank That (Soulja Boy),” one of the earliest examples of a runaway digital hit single, spread virally over the internet rather than through record label advertising and the radio. The song spawned an online dance craze and spent seven weeks at number one on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart.

The plaintiff said she was driven to Way’s house and offered a job on the spot as his assistant. The job, which she said consisted mostly of cleaning the house and rolling blunts — hollowed out cigars filled with marijuana — paid just $500 a week, but also came with room and board. She said accepted, but was unimpressed with the accommodations. Though Way lived in large house high in the canyon on the outskirts of Malibu, she said her room was spare, with nothing but an air mattress.

“It wasn’t as fancy as the other places I’d stayed before,” she testified.

Nor was she especially starstruck by Way.

“He looked very fragile, very skinny,” the plaintiff told the jury. “He didn’t look healthy. I wanted to help him. I didn’t want him to die.”

The next morning, the woman said, she was not allowed to leave — not to get her clothes and belongings, and not allowed to go to a store to buy a toothbrush or feminine products. About once a week, she said, she would try to leave, but Way or his retinue always told her that she couldn’t. She didn’t have a car, and her phone “went missing,” as did her driver’s license, though she said Way later revealed that he had taken it.

“He said, ‘Bitch, I have your license,” the plaintiff said.

Way, she said, would routinely insult her in the coarsest of language, calling her a “stupid dumb bitch,” “ugly bumpy-faced bitch” and “retarded.” She said he would mistreat her in front of his friends, who were a constant presence at his house, and they would laugh. He would also reportedly regularly menace her with his Draco pistol, a Romanian semi-automatic weapon similar to an AK-47.

“Soulja used to point a gun at me,” the plaintiff testified. “I felt like he was willing to pull it if I did something wrong.” She also said that Way had threatened, at least once, to “send shooters to my mom’s house.”

Physical violence, too, became part of the routine.

“He would hit me,” the woman said. “Most of the time it was on my chest area, the arms, my ribs. Sometimes, if he was very mad, he would hit me in my face.”

According to her testimony, Way would also rape her about once every two weeks.

“He usually had a group of people at the house,” the plaintiff said. “If there was no women around at night, he would grab me. He would call me to come do something, and he would just pull my pants down and start having sex with me.”

Even though she was his prisoner, the plaintiff said, she was barely fed. Before she started working for Way, she said, she weighed about 150 pounds.

“I was about 86 pounds when I managed to get away from him,” she said, crying. “I didn’t even feel human anymore. I felt like an animal.”

A few months later, Way went to jail for violating the terms of his probation stemming from a 2014 gun charge. Surprisingly, she said, his attitude toward the plaintiff began to change. He began to call her every day from jail.

“He was apologetic,” the plaintiff said. “He said, ‘My bad, I’m not gonna do that anymore. You’re good.’”

He even told her that he loved her. When he was released from jail, after a few months, the two moved in together — first into a hotel in Hollywood, then into a house in a gated community in Bell Canyon. They shared a bed, and had consensual sex, she said.

But after a while, his old behavior returned, the plaintiff testified, adding that one night, he saw a comment left on one of her photographs on social media, and became enraged with jealousy. She was sleeping, she said, when he picked her up and body slammed her on the ground.

“He started being mean to me again, yelling, telling me how ugly I was,” the plaintiff testified. “I would beg for him to stop … He didn’t care anymore.”

“Why didn’t you leave then?” her attorney, Ron Zambrano of West Coast Trial Lawyers asked her.

“I don’t know,” she said. “i just didn’t know what to do. I was scared, I was embarrassed to tell anybody. I had lost my apartment. I didn’t have any money. He was refusing to pay me. I didn’t really have options.”

The plaintiff is set to retake the stand on Thursday. Zambrano has said that after she testifies, he will call Way as a hostile witness. Trial began last Thursday, with Way’s defense claiming the rapper had never employed the plaintiff and their romantic relationship had been tumultuous but not abusive.

The case is not the rapper’s first brush with the law over domestic violence. In 2019, an ex-girlfriend named Kayla Myers sued Way for domestic violence and kidnapping; among other things, she said he “kicked her, stomped on her stomach and bashed her head with a large gun.” In 2021, a jury ruled in favor of Myers and ordered Way to pay her $471,800.

In the current lawsuit, Jane Doe is suing Way for sexual battery, assault, false imprisonment, gender violence, and a range of labor violations, including hostile work environment, constructive discharge and failure to pay minimum wage.

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