A lawsuit filed in August accuses hip-hop pioneer Afrika Bambaataa of sexually abusing and prostituting a minor over a four-year period in the early 1990s.
According to the lawsuit, filed under the New York Child Victims Act, the John Doe victim alleges that “from 1991, when the Plaintiff was merely 12 years old, to 1995, the Plaintiff was repeatedly sexually abused and sex trafficked at the hands of Bambaataa, referred to in the lawsuit by his birth name, Lance Taylor.
In the he lawsuit, the then-12-year-old Doe was granted access to the home gym within Bambaataa’s Bronx apartment, where the DJ first “would comment about Plaintiff’s muscular body and would touch Plaintiff on the shoulders, biceps, and torso.” Allegedly, the hip-hop legend later “inappropriately touched Plaintiff in his private areas,” followed by watching pornographic videos at the defendant’s apartment where he would “encourage Plaintiff to masturbating [sic],” which soon after “progressed to mutual masturbation.” That, the lawsuit claims, “progressed to sodomy.” The “Plaintiff became a victim of sex trafficking as Defendant Taylor would transport Plaintiff to other locations and offer Plaintiff for sex to other adult men,” the lawsuit states. “During said encounters Defendant Taylor would watch as Plaintiff was sodomized by other adult men.”
The alleged abuse lasted from 1991 to 1995. The victim — now in his early Forties — “suffered physical injury, severe and permanent emotional distress, mental anguish, depression, and embarrassment. Plaintiff was prevented from obtaining the full enjoyment of life and has been unable to keep a steady job. As a result, Plaintiff has incurred loss of income and/or loss of earning capacity,” the lawsuit says.
The lawsuit also lists Zulu Nation, Universal Zulu Nation, and XYZ Corp. as defendants, as they allegedly helped “to target, groom, and sexually abuse children”; those organizations parted ways with their founder Bambaataa in 2016 following another allegation of sexual abuse against the DJ by one of his “crate boys,” Ronald Savage, who wrote in his memoir that Bambaataa also made him perform oral sex on a Zulu Nation member. “Crate Boys” was the nickname for neighborhood kids who helped haul records for DJs. Other alleged victims stepped forward shortly thereafter.
In a statement (via The Source), Zulu Nation said of the new lawsuit: “Nothing has changed since 2016 when these decades-ago accusations first surfaced. This is a personal matter for Afrika Bambaataa and his lawyers to deal with and has absolutely nothing to do with the 10-years long UZN-DOCA mission, programs, and projects which continue in the revolutionary legacy of both the Black Panther Party & the Young Lords Party to ‘Serve the People, Body & Soul.’”
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Author: Brad LeBeau
Photo: ArturoAlmanza