Hip-hop media personality DJ Akademiks has been sued for rape, sexual assault, and defamation.
As Rolling Stone reports, Fauziya “Ziya” Abashe, a woman who dated Akademiks in 2021 after meeting him online, filed a lawsuit against the YouTuber and podcaster. Akademiks is a prominent and controversial figure in the rap media landscape, who often puts himself in the middle of feuds and arguments. He has been an especially high-profile figure over the past month due to his involvement in the recent beef between Drake and Kendrick Lamar.
In the suit, Abashe alleges that on July 16, 2022, when she hadn’t seen Akademiks, whose real name is Livingston Allen, for about a year, he invited her to his home in New Jersey. Upon arrival, she says two unidentified men (named John Doe 1 and John Doe 2 in legal documents) drugged her drink, which “impacted her memory and caused her to lose consciousness,” before assaulting and raping her on Allen’s pool deck. Per the lawsuit, she woke up around 4AM in a bedroom with Allen, who was in the process of raping her. She says she was “begging” for him to stop and was “crying for most of this assault but losing her ability to move physically.” The lawsuit provides further graphic details about the allegations.
Abashe says the next morning Allen played her footage of the alleged assault on the pool deck, and she saw herself lying on the ground lifeless during the encounter. She adds that he told her to “get tested” and indicated he would do the same. She says afterward she went to the police, who directed her to the hospital for a rape kit, which detected traces of Allen’s sperm. She says the police then took photos of the bruises on her body and that she captured audio of Allen describing the assault on a “recorded wire call.”
Abashe says she chose not to press charges until the incident came to light when she and Allen discussed it on social media in late 2023. In a video from December 30, 2023, Allen said Abashe “was getting trained by my two mens on my pool deck.” In the lawsuit, Abashe says she is suing for defamation because Allen implied she was voluntarily participating in an orgy with his friends. In a statement to Rolling Stone, Abashe said, “I’m confident that justice will prevail and the veil will be removed so no other woman will have to endure what I did.”
If you or someone you know is undergoing sexual abuse, please visit rainn.org or contact the National Sexual Assault Helpline at 1-800-656-4673.
