Afrika Bambaataa‘s alleged sexual assault victim has petitioned a Bronx court to issue a ruling about his lawsuit, which was initially filed in 2021.
According to court documents obtained by HipHopDX, the attorney for the John Doe in the matter has filed a letter as of Thursday (March 28) to request that the judge sign the order, which was first put on his desk in 2022, a year after the original case was filed, in favor of his client.
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“This firm represents Plaintiff in the above-referenced matter,” the letter read. “Plaintiff filed a Motion for Default Judgment (motion sequence #3) against Def. Taylor on August 1, 2022. Plaintiff is once again respectfully inquiring as to when the Court will issue a decision and Order.”
A judge has not yet responded to the request.
Afrika Bambaataa and the Soul Sonic Force changed the Hip Hop landscape forever in 1982 with “Planet Rock,” an electronic/Hip Hop amalgamation of Kraftwerk’s “Trans Europe Express” and “Numbers,” Babe Ruth’s “The Mexican,” Captain Sky’s “Super Sprom” and Fairlight CMI’s “ORCH5.”
As the former leader of the Universal Zulu Nation, he helped spread Hip Hop culture across the globe, enshrining his name in the Hip Hop history books along the way.
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But in 2016, Bambaataa resigned from his position as the leader of the Universal Zulu Nation amid allegations of child sexual abuse dating as far back as the 1970s. Since then, the 64-year-old has retreated from the public eye.
In the initial suit, the man — only identified as John Doe — claims Bambaataa sex trafficked him from 1991 to 1995, beginning when the accuser was 12 years old. The Hip Hop pioneer would have been around 33 or 34 at the time.
Doe claims Bambaataa repeatedly “sexually abused and sex trafficked” him at the Bronx River Houses public housing project, where they both lived. Doe and his lawyers allege Bambaataa “eventually began to inappropriately touch [Doe] in his private areas while [Doe] was in [Bambaataa’s apartment].”
They also say he “eventually encouraged [Doe] to watch pornographic videos while in [Bambaataa]’s apartment,” which “progressed to mutual masturbation… and sodomy.” They claim he became a victim of sex trafficking as [Bambaataa] would transport [Doe] to other locations and offer [him] for sex to other adult men. During said encounters [Bambaataa] would watch as [Doe] was sodomized by other adult men.”
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The Zulu Nation publicly apologized for Bambaataa’s alleged actions in 2016, saying they were sorry “to the many people who have been hurt by the actions of Afrika Bambaataa and the subsequent poor response of our organization to allegations leveled against him.”
The organization’s stance hasn’t changed in the years since. In the wake of the lawsuit, Zulu Nation said in a statement, “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.”
