New allegations against Russell Simmons and “Extra” host A.J. Calloway.
Author and journalist Sil Lai Abrams has come forward with alleged account of sexual assault at the hands of Russell Simmons and A.J. Calloway, host of Extra, formerly the host of the original iterations of BET’s 106 & Park.
In a new story with The Hollywood Reporter, Abrams says that she was the victim of two incidents that occurred nearly ten years apart with the first being in 1994 when Simmons allegedly raped her and in 2006 in which she accuses Calloway of assault.
She previously told both storied in 2007 with her boon, No More Drama: Nine Simple Steps To Transforming a Breakdown into a Breakthrough, using different names at the time of publication.
Abrams, who once worked with and had a brief romantic relationship with says that the two were hanging out only as friends when the incident occurred. She says that in ’94, after drinking and partying, a driver took her to a sober Simmons’ home.
She says that she indicated that she had no intentions have sex, but Russell Simmons allegedly “flipped her onto her stomach, pulled down the bike shorts she was wearing beneath her dress and raped her.” Soon after, he would instruct her to leave as another woman would be showing up to his home soon.
She says that the occurrence left her depressed and suicidal and that a few years later, she ran into Simmons who apologized about what he had done, adding “I’m a different person now.” Russell Simmons’s representatives have denied both the rape and conversation.
In describing the second incident, Abram revealed that when she was working a charity event, A.J. Calloway made unprompted sexual advances that included fondling Abrams’s breasts and pulling out his penis in 2006.
“She called me and told me about A.J.,” said Carol Ingram, a friend of Sil Lai Abrams. “He grabbed her and started kissing her and then he grabbed her hand and started to masturbate.”
Calloway was arrested and charged with forcible touching and attempted sexual misconduct, but the according to his attorneys the charges were dropped, calling them “decade-old allegations.”
“They were false when they were first made and are false now,” said the attorney. “Mr. Calloway fully cooperated with law enforcement from the beginning, denied the allegations, and the case was completely dismissed in November 2007. After the case was dismissed, the court records were sealed as a matter of law and are no longer available.”
Abrams had plans of going public with both accounts as early as November 2017 in a segment with MSNBC’s Joy Reid, with Reid accusing NBC’s legal department of “slow-walking the story with idiotic requests.”
