T.I. (Clifford Harris) and Tameka “Tiny” Harris are being sued by a woman who claims that the couple drugged and raped her around 2005, the New York Times reports. The woman, an Air Force veteran identified as Jane Doe, claims that she met the couple at a Los Angeles nightclub, where they proceeded to drug her, take her back to a hotel, and rape her.
The lawsuit claims that Tiny offered Jane Doe and her friend a sip of her drink at the club, which they accepted. Both women were invited back to a hotel room, but only Jane Doe rode with T.I. and Tiny. While there were initially other people in the hotel room, they were soon asked to leave, the suit claims. At that point, Jane Doe was alone with the couple. She alleges that they showered together and the couple massaged her as she began to feel “extremely dizzy and lightheaded.”
The woman says she remembers T.I. sexually assaulting her with his feet and telling him “no.” The lawsuit claims that she then vomited and “passed out until the following morning,” at which point she was in pain. In 2021, the friend who was with Jane Doe at the club told the Times that they had recounted the night’s events to each other the next morning.
The Harrises’ lawyer, Andrew Brettler, provided the following statement to the Cut (emphasis his own):
“This plaintiff has been threatening to file this lawsuit for THREE years. For THREE years, we have emphatically and categorically denied these allegations. For THREE years we have maintained our innocence and refused to pay these extortionate demands for things we didn’t do. For THREE years, we’ve maintained the same position while the claims in this story have changed time and time again. Our position is clear … We are innocent of these fake claims, we will not be shaken down, and we look forward to our day in court.”
In 2021, dozens of women came forward claiming that the couple had drugged and assaulted them. At that time, Jane Doe tried to press criminal charges against the couple, but the case was dropped by the LAPD due to an expired statute of limitations. The new civil suit was filed under California’s Sexual Abuse and Cover-Up Accountability Act, which, similarly to New York’s Adult Survivors Act, extends the statute of limitations for sexual-assault claims made by adults.
