The woman suing Soulja Boy with claims the musician beat, raped, and held her against her will while she was working as his personal assistant in 2019 broke down on the witness stand Wednesday as she described the alleged abuse during a civil trial in Santa Monica, California.
The woman, who filed her lawsuit as a Jane Doe, claimed the Grammy-nominated rapper isolated her at his rental home in the mountains above Malibu, just over the border in neighboring Ventura county. She claimed he confiscated her driver’s license, withheld food, and regularly berated, abused, and pointed guns at her.
She said the first time he allegedly raped her was during a police raid on the home in mid-February 2019. She claimed Soulja Boy, born Deandre Cortez Way, chucked several guns out a window into a steep canyon and was trying to dispose of narcotics in a bathroom when he allegedly turned her around, pulled her pants down and “started having sex” with her. The woman says the purported attack left her “in shock.” She didn’t report it to the Ventura County Sheriff’s Deputies who raided the home because she was “terrified” of Way and possible retaliation.
“I feared for my life,” Doe told the jury on the fourth day of the civil trial. She claimed Way told her he knew where her mother lived and had threatened to “send shooters” to the house. “I was scared of what he would do to my family. I didn’t want him to hurt anybody because of me,” she testified.
The woman said she was so desperate for food while living with Way in early 2019, she gathered loose change from the home and gave it to the property’s gardeners so they could buy her instant noodles. She claimed she dropped from 140 pounds down to 86 pounds before Way was sent to jail in April 2019 for a probation violation linked to the raid. “I didn’t even feel human anymore. I felt like an animal,” she said.
The Jane Doe openly wept as she described some of the alleged psychological abuse she suffered. “He would call me an ugly, bumpy-faced bitch. He would tell me I was fat. He would make fun of me and have his friends make fun of me. He would spit on the floor and say, ‘Bitch, hurry up, come clean this shit up,’ while his friends watched,” she claimed. “I wanted to die. I didn’t want to be there anymore. I just wanted to go home.”
Way, 34, sat at the defense table during the woman’s testimony, looking straight ahead. He has denied any wrongdoing in the case. The woman reported her alleged abuse to the Ventura County Sheriff’s Office in December 2020. Prosecutors declined to file any criminal charges. “In April 2021, after a thorough review of the investigation conducted by Ventura County Sheriff’s Office detectives, the Ventura County District Attorney’s Office declined to file charges due to insufficient evidence to prove the alleged crimes true beyond a reasonable doubt,” a D.A. spokesperson tells Rolling Stone.
Way’s defense team are expected to cross-examine the woman when she returns to the stand Thursday. In his opening statement, Way’s lead defense lawyer, Rickey Ivie, told jurors that the woman was never hired by Way as a personal assistant. He said she was initially allowed to sleep at Way’s home “if she wanted to stay and roll blunts,” but that “no employment or monetary compensation was ever offered or discussed.” He said the woman and Way later entered into a consensual romantic relationship.
Leaving the courthouse Wednesday, Ivie again defended his client, who stood beside him in a suit and tie. “The testimony was really a tale of two stories, because the story that she just gave today is not the story she gave in her deposition. It’s not the story that she gave to the police when she made her complaint, after she retained a lawyer. The story that she told today is not what’s reflected in the text messages that transpired between the parties for the eight months they were together,” Ivie tells Rolling Stone. “She’s been inconsistent, grossly inconsistent, wildly inconsistent. Those allegations that she made just aren’t true. They’re not going to be substantiated by the time this trial is over.”
On the witness stand, the woman said she entered Way’s orbit in January 2019 when she was driven to his house by one of Way’s managers, a music industry contact she had known for several years. She said she previously did personal assistant work for other rap artists including Lil Twist and Trippie Redd, and that the manager contacted her over Instagram, requesting a meeting related to her new business selling pre-rolled cones made out of rose petals that could be used to smoke tobacco or marijuana. The woman claimed she arrived at Way’s rental home and was immediately loaded into an SUV to accompany him to a red-carpet event for the premiere of his reality show, Marriage Bootcamp, and that she held Way’s “Gucci man purse” and rolled “blunts” for him that night, leading to his offer to make her his personal assistant.
The woman testified that she was given a room in the house and was promised $500 a week for her services. She claimed soon after she started working for Way, her phone “disappeared,” along with her license, and that she didn’t have a toothbrush for months and had to clean her teeth by rinsing her mouth with hot water. She also claimed that Way pulled a gun on her for the first time after only two weeks, and that after an incident at the house where one of Way’s ex-girlfriends allegedly was held captive in a garage, Way allegedly turned more violent and controlling. “Now I couldn’t leave. He couldn’t have me talking to anybody, telling anybody what happened,” she told the jury.
When Way went to jail for the probation violation, she still felt trapped at the house due to his prior threats and the ongoing presence of his entourage at the property, the woman testified. She said Way eventually seemed to soften toward her while he was in custody and began showing a different side during daily phone calls.
“He would sing to me. He would open up about how he felt in there. He would cry sometimes, telling me how bad it was,” she testified. “He just showed a more vulnerable side, a more human side, like he was a real person.”
The woman said she engaged in a consensual romantic relationship with Way after he got out of jail, but the honeymoon phase didn’t last. “He started being mean to me again, yelling at me, telling me how ugly I was,” she testified through tears. “I would beg for him to stop, please, stop, [but] he didn’t care anymore,” she said.
Doe, who filed her lawsuit in January 2021, is suing Way with claims he subjected her to sexual battery, assault, false imprisonment, emotional distress, unpaid overtime, and a hostile work environment. She claims Way punched her in the head on at least 10 separate occasions. She alleges one incident was so brutal that she lost consciousness and woke up in a locked room with no food or water.
Way, who shot to worldwide fame with his 2007 viral hit “Crank That (Soulja Boy),” has also been accused of physical and sexual assault by former girlfriends Kayla Myers and model Nia Riley, the daughter of musician Teddy Riley. Way appeared on the reality shows Love & Hip Hop: Hollywood and Marriage Boot Camp with Riley.
In 2021, Riley sat down with YouTube vlogger TashaK and said Way threatened her with a gun and kicked her in the stomach while she was pregnant, causing her to suffer 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 Way is now disputing.
In a separate lawsuit, Myers claimed she had an on-again, off-again romantic relationship with Way that ended when the rapper allegedly held a gun to her head, threatened her life, and assaulted her at his home on Feb. 1, 2019, the incident described on Wednesday by Jane Doe. A civil court jury found Way liable for the assault and kidnapping of Myers at a trial.
