Music legend and entrepreneur Russell Simmons has been accused by five more women of sexual misconduct and rape.
Since stepping down from his business in November after being accused by two women of sexual misconduct, the Def Jam Records co-founder is facing new allegations that span from the 1980s to as recent as 2016.
Actress Natashia Williams-Blach, massage therapist Erin Beattie, Rapper Sherri Hines, Lisa Kirk and "Insecure" star Amanda Seales are the latest group of women to come forward with lewd stories about Simmons.
In a scathing Los Angeles Times report, Williams-Blach told reporters that Simmons tried to force her to perform oral sex on him in 1996. When the young actress went to check out promotional videos of "How to Be a Player," he tried to kiss her, she said. She said she told Simmons she wasn’t interested, but he kept going.
“He pushes the crown of my head swiftly down while he’s got his hand on his zipper. It was just a few seconds,” Williams-Blach said. She told Simmons that she had to get back to UCLA where she was a student, and he agreed to take her, she said.
Beattie recalled Simmons exposing himself to her and demanding that she touch his penis in 2005 during a massage. Hines said that he raped her in 1983. At the time she was only 17 or 18 years old when he allegedly forced himself on her.
She recalled visiting him at one of his New York offices that he had just moved into, which were sparsely furnished, but she couldn't remember the building’s exact location. Once inside, they sat down on a couch. “The next thing I knew, he was pinning me down and I was trying to fight him and he had his way,” she said. “I left crying.”
Kirk said a similar situation happened to her in 1988. She alleges that Simmons forced himself on her in a bathroom. However, the most recent allegation comes from Seales who claims that the mogul made lewd comments to her during a meeting in Los Angeles.
Seales said Simmons used vulgar language to ask if they had ever had sex. When she told him, no, she said, Simmons responded: “Oh, right. 'Cause I would've remembered that, right?”
Simmons has vehemently denied all of these allegations.
"These horrific accusations have shocked me to my core, and all of my relations have been consensual," he told Rolling Stone. "I am blessed to have shared extraordinary relationships, whether through work or love, with many great women; and I have enormous respect for the women's movement worldwide and their struggle for respect, dignity, equality and power. I am devastated by any reason I may have given to anyone to say or think of me in the ways that are currently being described."