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Russell Simmons pictured in 2014.
‘He pushed me into his apartment and then he threw me down on the floor,’ said Kelly Cutrone of her encounter with Russell Simmons, above. Photograph: Andrew Kelly/Reuters
‘He pushed me into his apartment and then he threw me down on the floor,’ said Kelly Cutrone of her encounter with Russell Simmons, above. Photograph: Andrew Kelly/Reuters

Russell Simmons accused by Kelly Cutrone of attempted rape

This article is more than 6 years old

Hip-hop mogul responds to 12th allegation of sexual misconduct against him by starting #NotMe social media campaign ‘to hold my accusers accountable’

Kelly Cutrone, the US fashion publicist, TV personality and author, has accused Russell Simmons of attempted rape.

The accusation comes as the New York police department are reportedly opening an investigation into Simmons after a number of other women have accused the Def Jam co-founder of rape and other sexual offences. Simmons has denied them all, writing on Instagram: “I have never had a sexual encounter that was not consensual or lawful. Ever.”

Speaking to Page Six of the New York Post, Cutrone said: “He pushed me into his apartment and then he threw me down on the floor and literally tried to grab … take my clothes off of me. And I started kicking him really, really hard, screaming, telling him to get the fuck off of me.

“I remember running out the door and getting a cab and all I remember was that I got in a cab and I remember a feeling – which was so crazy – of, ‘Oh my god. Somebody just tried to rape me. What do I do?’ And then the energy of going to the police and pressing charges against him was overwhelming to me.”

The first accusation against Simmons came from Keri Claussen Khalighi, who said that she “fought wildly” against Simmons as he forced her to have sex in his apartment when she was 17. Later accusations came from screenwriter Jenny Lumet, who said Simmons coerced her into sex at his apartment in 1991, and then nine other women speaking to the New York Times and LA Times alleged incidents of rape, sexual assault or sexual harassment spanning between 1983 to 2016. Four of the women have accused Simmons of rape.

Simmons is one of the most successful and high-profile African-American entrepreneurs in the US. As well as the iconic hip-hop label Def Jam and its various spinoff companies, he has founded various clothing, media and health brands. While always maintaining that any sexual contact with his accusers was consensual, he was initially apologetic in the wake of the earliest accusations, acknowledging that “I have been thoughtless and insensitive in some of my relationships.”

As the accusations have grown more numerous Simmons has taken a more defensive stance. He has begun a social media campaign around the hashtag #NotMe, intended to “hold [his] accusers accountable”. He said it “is not a movement against or even in conjunction with #MeToo”, the campaign used by women to share instances of sexual harassment.

Simmons said the stories in the New York Times “range from the patently untrue to the frivolous and hurtful” and that the latest accusations were an “insane pile-on”.

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