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Jay-Z Accuser Recants Rape Allegations
Confirmed
In Short: A woman who accused Jay-Z of raping her when she was 13 has formally recanted her allegations, saying they were false.
A woman who accused Jay-Z of raping her when she was 13 has formally recanted her allegations, saying they were false. The woman, who filed a lawsuit in 2024, stated in a declaration filed in Manhattan federal court on Thursday, September 24th, that Jay-Z never raped her.
The woman's new lawyer, James Blair Newman Jr., said in a statement that his client maintains she was the victim of sexual assault but was 'entirely mistaken' when she identified Jay-Z. She also stated she had not been promised or given money in exchange for making the declaration.
Jay-Z, who has been married to Beyoncé since 2008, strongly denied the allegations from the outset, calling them a 'frivolous, fictitious and appalling' blackmail attempt. He has since filed a malicious prosecution and defamation lawsuit against Tony Buzbee, his law firm, and the Jane Doe.
The lawsuit against Jay-Z was dropped in February 2025, less than three months after it was filed. The California case was dismissed earlier this month by a state appeals court, which said there was no evidence that Buzbee filed the case knowing the accusations were false.
In her declaration, the woman said she understood her false claims had caused Jay-Z 'immense pain, suffering, and damage that can never be fully undone.' She also said she had not received any monetary compensation for the recanting.
Jay-Z's legal team has claimed that he lost $20 million in contracts due to the false allegations in Buzbee's lawsuit. The rapper has been fighting back aggressively against the accusations, stating that Buzbee and his unnamed client fabricated the claims in an effort to extort him.
What this adds
The woman's recanting comes with a motion to drop her from Jay-Z's lawsuit, which she was voluntarily dismissed from in February 2025.
Background
A woman who accused Jay-Z of raping her when she was 13 has formally recanted her allegations, saying they were false.
What's confirmed
- Setting out the events that led to her allegation, the woman said she saw an advert on Facebook in September or October 2024 looking for people who might have sexual assault claims against Combs.
- The unnamed woman filed a lawsuit in 2024 claiming she had been drugged and raped by Jay-Z, real name Shawn Carter, and Sean "Diddy" Combs at a party after the MTV Video Music Awards in 2000.
- When the accuser dropped her case in February 2025, the rapper, who is married to singer Beyoncé, said: "The trauma that my wife, my children, loved ones and I have endured can never be dismissed." The woman, from Alabama, has now been removed from Carter's lawsuit.
- “Shawn ‘Jay-Z’ Carter never raped me,” the Jane Doe wrote in a 12-page declaration filed in Manhattan federal court on Thursday, September 24th.
- The woman that accused Jay-Z of sexual assault is recanting her allegations.
- Her new lawyer, James Blair Newman Jr, said in a statement that his client maintains she was the victim of sexual assault but was ‘entirely mistaken’ when she identified Jay-Z.
What's still developing
- "The ad triggered memories of being raped when I was 13 years old," she said.
- She also said Buzbee and other lawyers acting on her behalf filed it "without conducting any independent investigation, background inquiry, or due diligence, and without obtaining any corroboration of the allegations".
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- The stars denied the allegation and she dropped the lawsuit last year.
- Buzbee, who filed dozens of abuse cases against Sean “ Diddy ” Combs during the mogul’s fall from grace, added Jay-Z to one of them in December 2024.
- In it, she does not outright say that Buzbee or her other former attorneys (David Fortney and Antigone Curis) knew her claims against Jay-Z were false before they filed them.
- The lawsuit against Carter was filed in December of 2024, and in February 2025, the case was voluntarily dismissed with prejudice after the accuser withdrew her complaint.
- In December 2024, the Jane Doe filed a lawsuit accusing JAY-Z and Sean “Diddy” Combs of raping her at a 2000 MTV VMAs afterparty.
- The suit was originally filed against Combs that October and amended to add JAY-Z as a co-defendant.
- Indeed, in an interview with NBC News conducted shortly after the suit against JAY-Z was filed, the woman admitted she made “some mistakes” in her recollections of the events.
- However, the new declaration was filed alongside a notice that JAY-Z was voluntarily dismissing the woman as a defendant in the action.
- “Shawn ‘Jay-Z’ Carter never raped me. I have never met or spoken to Mr. Carter,” the plaintiff wrote, per Rolling Stone.