Nicki Minaj and her husband Kenneth Petty have been named defendants in a lawsuit brought against them by Jennifer Hough, the woman whom Petty assaulted in 1994 when they were both 16 years old. The lawsuit alleges a pattern of harassment by Minaj and Petty, including reaching out to Hough directly, offering her large sums of money via proxies, and sending people to her house announced, which eventually led her to move out of her home in August 2020. Hough is also alleging sexual assault and battery by Petty related to the 1994 incident. She is also suing Minaj and Petty for emotional distress, harassment, and witness intimidation.
In 1995, Petty was convicted on one count of attempted rape in the first degree, assault in the second degree, unlawful imprisonment in the second degree, and criminal possession of a weapon, all stemming from the assault of Hough. In 2006, Petty pleaded guilty to a manslaughter charge in an unrelated case. After serving seven years of a 10-year sentence, he was let out of prison on supervised release in 2013. In March 2020, Petty was charged with failing to register as a sex offender in California after moving from New York to the West Coast in 2019. Earlier this month, it was reported that he took a plea deal, pleading guilty to one count of failing to register as a sex offender.
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