The rape victim in the 1995 Kenneth Petty rape case has broken her silence as she speaks about the ordeal publicly for the first time.
In an interview on The Real daytime talk show, the woman Jennifer Hough sat down for the first time to speak about the incident to a large audience and made some damning allegations against Petty and his now wife, Nicki Minaj.
Hough is presently suing the pair for harassment as she claims that Minaj and her husband approached her to change her story so that he can get off on his current charges for failing to register as a sex offender in California.
Kenneth Petty moved from New York to California in 2019 to be with his wife, who resides in Calabasas, but he did not register and was only picked up on the radar after he was stopped for a routine traffic stop that later led to the charges being filed against him. He pleaded guilty to the charges and is now facing up to 10 years imprisonment for failing to register.
However, the efforts by Minaj and Petty are stirring up a pile of legal troubles for the pair as Hough alleges harassment and intimidation from Minaj and her family to herself and even her own family.
According to her, Nicki Minaj reached out to her once in 2020, asking for her help.
“…In march 2020, she called me and said that she got word that I was willing to help them out in a situation, I didn’t understand what she was referring to. She offered to fly me and my family to LA…I turned it down. And I told her woman to woman this really happened. I hadn’t spoken to her since,” Hough says.
Hough claims that Minaj and Petty were harassing her by sending people constantly to negotiate what her cost would be to settle the story.
When asked in what way she was being harassed, she said, “with them sending people to negotiate numbers as far as money is concerned with family members and Nicki is the one who personally reached out to me you know regards to helping her, helping them in this situation.”
Hough also alleged that she was threatened that the Pettys would put a hit on her for refusing to take $20,000.
“I kept saying no to every offer, to every suggestion. The last incident was when one of their associates put 20,000 on my lap and I still kept saying no. the last message I received was that I should have taken the money because now they were going to put that money on my head because I kept saying no to every offer.”
Hough says that she is afraid, but she is standing up for herself.
“I’m tired of being afraid. I feel like that the action that were taken in regards to this situation has put me in a different type of fear at my age now and it was wrong and I don’t want to be afraid anymore, and the only way to not be afraid is to speak up.”
In the interview, Hough says that she first met Kenneth on September 16, 1994, while going to school. She recalled the day that Petty raped her, which has left her traumatized.
“I was on my way to school, high school. I seen him at a bus stop and I didn’t think anything of it other than there goes Kenny across the street,” she said. “He asked me where I was going and I said I was going to school. I asked him where he was going. He said he was going to school, too.”
Petty, who was 16 at the time, had denied the first-degree rape charges but pleaded guilty to a lesser count- attempted rape and was sentenced to almost five years in jail. Hough says that Petty is far from innocent.
“He pushes me up the steps. Now I’m crying because now I’m inside,” Hough said, adding that she was pleading with him to tell her what he wanted. “He pushed me down on the bed. We wrestled for my clothes because all I could was hold my pants as tight as I can.”
She became emotional as she recounted the incident.
“I just held on to my pants and he held my arms down and I squeezed the sides of my stomach so hard,” she said, noting that she wished she had fought harder because she became tired, which is when Petty committed the act.
“After he got off the top of me, he stood in the mirror and he beat his chest,” she said. “And he said ‘I’m the man. I’m the man.'”
Hough said she tried to get away from Kenneth Petty, and after she reached her school, she reported the incident to an adult who called the police. Petty was arrested at the school.
“Then they took me to the hospital,” she said.
Hough became emotional as she said that she still lives with the trauma of what happened and that she often blamed herself for what happened. She noted that the rape affected her terribly as she moved away from her home and family. She said it has caused her to live in fear.
“I had to leave my family, I had to leave my home, I had to go away…hiding within myself, living and surviving through insecurities, using them to protect myself, thinking if I don’t look a certain way I won’t attract a certain attention.”
Both Kenneth Petty and Nicki Minaj have been silent on the threats. Still, social media users have surmised that Minaj’s recent rants on social media about the vaccine were all a distraction from the bad publicity coming from Hough’s lawsuit being filed last week.
Hough, who has previously said that Minaj offered her up to $500,000 to recant her story in an effort to get the current case dropped, told The Real hosts that she wants her lawsuit to send a message that the Pettys were wrong.
“They were wrong, you can’t do this to people. You shouldn’t do this to people. He did something a long time ago and he had consequences he was supposed to stick with, what he did to my family wasn’t ok. It wasn’t right, and it doesn’t matter how much money you have, what your status is, you cant intimidate people to make things go better for you and that’s what they did. I want my daughters to do as they grow as they come into contact with friends, family, strangers, they will know they have a voice, use it.”
Minaj and Petty got married in 2019 and now have a young baby boy.
Meanwhile, many online questioned the credibility of Hough, who some alleged changed her story as she previously spoke to blogger Tasha K and said she never directly spoke to either Kenneth or Nicki.
On Wednesday, Nicki Minaj has been trending as her large fan base defended her.
Others, however, shared that they believed the victim.
One person shared a clip of Nicki defending Petty as she insinuated that Hough was a white woman who cried foul on Petty. Hough is actually a black woman.
“All because he didn’t have $7,000 to get hisself bailed out cause when you in the hood you don’t have that kind of money, neither does your family. And when the alleged accuser wrote a letter to the judge asking him to recant the statements, she was told she was go to jail for 90 days if she recanted the statement. But white is right,” Minaj declared.
Nicki Minaj also insinuated that Petty was just a victim of a false accusation by a white woman, which led to some of her fans having sympathy and believing Petty’s version of what happened as false accusations of that nature were not too uncommon.
Minaj has been quiet and has not responded to the allegations.
