Multiple women recounted the time Russell Simmons allegedly sexually assaulted and raped them in a HBO Max documentary,
On The Record. The mogul reappeared on
The Breakfast Club where denied the accusations once again. “Back then, I thought it was a game…. There were no Black actresses that I didn’t date and they’re my friends today,” Simmons said on the radio show. “They don’t have the experience of me being a monster the movie makes me out to be.” “I can never say that someone doesn’t feel victimized. I can tell you that I don’t feel that I victimized them,” he added. One of Simmons’ accusers, Sil Lai Abrams, hopped on Twitter shortly after the interview was published and dragged the radio show for giving him a platform. “Why do you carry water for this man?” tweeted Abrams, who claims Simmons raped her in 1994. “Why now? Why are you so tone deaf? You’re all complicit in ensuring that black women’s right to bodily autonomy continues to be denied. You’re also rape apologists.” “I wrote about the rape in my first and second books. 2007 and 2016 respectively,” Abrams added when addressing users who questioned her raising awareness to a 30-year-old issue. Abrams said Simmons getting publicity in 2020 makes her “feel sick.”
“The biggest radio show in the black community just gave a huge middle finger to black women and survivors of sexual assault,” Abrams wrote in another tweet. “Stunts like what @breakfastclubam is pulling this morning by having Russell Simmons on to talk about *social justice of all things* is why it took over 25 years for R. Kelly to start to be held accountable for his serial predation of Black women and girls.” Russell Simmons admitted that he didn’t watch the documentary. Do you think The Breakfast Club is wrong for interviewing someone who is accused of sexual assault?