Yahoo News Kanye West Sued for Sexual Harassment by Ex-Assistant
Kanye West is under fire again after his former assistant Lauren Pisciotta filed a lawsuit accusing him of sexual harassment, breach of contract and wrongful termination, according to reports from TMZ, Rolling Stone, the BBC and other outlets. She is also suing the rapper and his various companies, including Yeezy, for fraud, unpaid wages and intentional infliction of emotional distress, according to Rolling Stone, which viewed the court documents.
Pisciotta reportedly collaborated with West on his Yeezy women’s clothing line as well as on his 2021 album Donda. She said she was hired as his assistant in 2021, with a million-dollar annual salary, under the condition that she would be available to him “24/7,” Rolling Stone reports.
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Pisciotta, who was already making the same annual income off OnlyFans and on social media, according to the lawsuit, said West was initially fine with her endeavor on the side. However, he then told her that he wanted her to be “God like” and asked her to delete her account, in exchange for an extra $1 million, the suit states. She complied. However, she claims West then began allegedly sexually harassing her.
According to the suit, one of the texts from West to Pisciotta read, “See my problem is I be wanting to fuck but then after I fuck I want a girl to tell me how hard they been fucked while I’m fucking them. Then I want her to cheat on me.”
In another text, per the suit, he asked Pisciotta, “Is my dick racist? I’m going to stare at pictures of white women with black asses and beat the shit out of my racist dick.”
Pisciotta claims West was “fixated on the penis size” of her partners and that he would masturbate during phone conversations with her, according to Rolling Stone.
And she alleges that during a flight to Paris, West informed her that he needed to talk to her and essentially trapped them in his room on the plane after he closed the door, which was unable to be opened from inside. While Pisciotta sat on a chair across from West, who was lying down on his bed, he began to masturbate under the covers, ultimately falling asleep, Rolling Stone reports.
In the lawsuit, it’s mentioned that Pisciotta was promoted to chief of staff for West’s various companies in September 2022 and was told she was getting a $3 million bonus. She was fired the following month, with the offer of a $3 million severance package. While she accepted it, Pisciotta claimed she never received it.
Pisciotta’s lawsuit comes nearly a month after Milo Yiannopoulus, who was Yeezy’s chief of staff, quit the company following West’s plans to create a pornography division.
In response to the lawsuit, West’s legal rep released a lengthy statement saying that he would be filing a suit against Pisciotta, who “actively pursued him sexually to coerce employment and other material benefits, then engaged in blackmail and extortion when her advances were rejected.”
In the statement, West’s rep claims Pisciotta “stole” the rapper’s cell phone “in an attempt to destroy phone records that would contradict her claims, all of which have been preserved.”
Pisciotta, West’s legal rep says, “was terminated for being unqualified, demanding unreasonable sums of money (including a $4 million annual salary) and numerous documented incidents of her lascivious, unhinged conduct.”
“During her employment Ms. Pisciotta offered [West] sex on his birthday to which he declined, sent [West] unsolicited nude images, sexual narratives and was seen twerking in the office during business hours,” the rep’s statement adds. “On one occasion, Pisciotta boasted how the best moment of her life was when she was being ejaculated on by a soccer player while simultaneously texting her boss. It is well documented how Ms. Pisciotta consistently used sexual coercion in an attempt to demand not only money but material items, namely Hermes Birkin bags, a Lamborghini and an endless quest for plastic surgery.”
The rep claims Pisciotta went from demanding $60 million in blackmail last year to $50 million last week.
“Such behavior is entirely inconsistent with someone who claims to have been sexually harassed or experienced a hostile work environment,” the statement reads. “It is evident that Ms. Pisciotta leveraged her association with [West] and his company, and her proximity to him, to seek material gains, clout and employment through inappropriate means. Her initial attempt at a lawsuit for unlawful termination gained no media traction, leading her to fabricate headlines following threats of blackmail and extortion.”
12:35 p.m. This story has been updated with a response from West’s legal rep.
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