On Thursday, television personality and author Kelly Cutrone, best known for her roles on America’s Next Top Model and MTV’s The Hills, came forward to share her own account of attempted sexual assault at the hands of Def Jam Co-Founder Russell Simmons.
Simmons has previously been accused of misconduct and assault with at least twelve other women. Following these allegations, he released a questionable statement on Instagram responding to the #MeToo movement with his own hashtag, #NotMe. “I will prove without any doubt that I am innocent of all rape charges,” he said. “I vehemently deny all these allegations.”
Page Six reports that these actions spurred Cutrone to share her own story. “The #NotMe thing? I’m going to do a #YeahYou. F—ck you,” she said. Cutrone shared that in 1991, she ran into Simmons at a party and agreed to go with him to another event. On the way, he invited her to his apartment, and when she declined, he said he needed to stop at his friend’s house. Instead, though, Cutrone said he brought her back to his own apartment and pushed her inside.
“He literally tried to take my clothes off of me,” Cutrone said. “I started kicking him really, really hard, screaming, telling him to get f—ck off of me. 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.”
Following earlier allegations, Simmons stepped down from his companies on November 30. Cutrone says that this isn’t enough. “All these guys have been doing is…go, like, ‘Hey, I’m really, really sorry and I’m going to step away from my business,” she told Page Six. “But you know what, a lot of these women have to go to work every day because they have to pay bills and they haven’t made $100 million.”
According to The New York Times, police in New York are currently investigating the slew of claims against Simmons.
Top photo via Flickr / Coco Curranski
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