This article covers a developing story. Continue to check back with us as we will be adding more information as it becomes available.
Kanye West‘s former assistant has leveled even more serious allegations against the disgraced rapper. In a new legal filing, Lauren Pisciotta amended her original claims of wrongful termination and sexual harassment from 2024, now accusing him of sexual battery and sex trafficking, along with other disturbing behavior in their professional relationship. The primary incidents, she says, occurred while the pair were on a business trip to San Francisco as Ye was preparing to launch his Donda Academy and included unwanted sexual advances and coercion into adhering to West’s sexual demands with the false promise of career advancement. Representatives for West have not responded to the new allegations at this time.
During the trip, specifically, Pisciotta, in her complaint, alleged that the rapper inappropriately asked her about her private parts and kissed her on the mouth without consent before the situation worsened in a writing session where she claimed West masturbated and inappropriately touched her. Later, she alleged that, after demanding access to her shower, he forced his way into her hotel room and pushed her onto the bed to sexually assault her, all while she says she was frozen in fear. He eventually stopped and apologized before leaving, but it was far from the end of the troubling encounters she had with Ye. The lawsuit also describes an incident where the rapper allegedly offered Pisciotta as a “sexual gift” to another man in exchange for Ye getting to have sex with their partner, a practice, the filing claims, he would employ “notoriously.“
Pisciotta’s lawyers also laid out how refusing West’s sexual advances allegedly put her in danger and disrupted her life. Not only does the lawsuit say her firing was due to her refusal, but it further claims that, even after she was no longer under his employ, Ye continued to harass her, even moving into her apartment complex where, in one incident, he “forcibly grabbed Ms. Pisciotta by the throat.” Once she moved to Florida to get away from him, her lawyers say things only escalated with calls of fake emergencies at her address, bogus deliveries and services, and, after her initial complaint was filed in June 2024, even swatting. In total, the updated counts against Ye in the suit include hostile work environment — sexual harassment, assault, battery, sexual battery, sex trafficking, failure to prevent harassment, discrimination and retaliation, gender discrimination, stalking, false imprisonment, promissory estoppel, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. Pesciotta and her lawyers are demanding a trial by jury and seeking general, economic, and punitive damages, including past and future lost earnings.