Photo by Jemal Countess/Getty Images for Women’s Media Center
Last year Anthony Anderson, Nelly, and Russell Simmons were all accused of sexual misconduct allegations. Now, A.J. Calloway is getting hit with some of his own. After writer and activist, Sil Lai Abrams went public in June, allegedly outing the music mogul for raping her and exposing the Extra host for reportedly assaulting her back in 2006, two more women are now coming forward with similar stories.
LOS ANGELES, CA – JANUARY 29: Sil Lai Abrams arrives to the 9th Annual Hollywood Bureau Symposium at Museum Of Tolerance on January 29, 2013 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Gabriel Olsen/FilmMagic)
The unnamed woman took to the Internet and surprisingly found a tie to Abrams: “I just happened to Google to see if anybody else had the same experience with the same person and her name popped up. So she was actually the first person I told after the actual incident who actually believed me.” After talking to Sil, the woman filed a report with the West Orange Police Department in New Jersey on Christmas Eve.
The former 106 & Park host’s other accuser was “terrified about coming forward,” but agreed to talk to The Daily Beast under the alias of “Talia” after reading Sil’s exposé. Talia added that she didn’t want opening up about her experience with A.J. to interrupt her life as it stands: “I don’t want it to affect my future, everything that I’ve worked hard for—and A.J. is someone that would try to do that.”
BROOKLYN, NY – NOVEMBER 13: A.J. Calloway attends Glamour’s 2017 Women of The Year Awards at Kings Theatre on November 13, 2017 in Brooklyn, New York. (Photo by Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for Glamour)
After going on a date, that she felt forced to go on by the TV personality in 2011, she recalls him taking her back to his place where he attempted to assault her after she made it clear that she wasn’t having sex that night: “Even though he’s tall and he looks skinny, he has some weight to him. He’s heavy, you know, and he put his whole body weight on top of me. He kept trying to open my blouse. He really was going for my skirt, and I was literally pulling my skirt down because I was not going to allow him to go any further. And he thought it was a game or something because he kept laughing and giggling and I’m like, no, stop, stop. And the more I said stop the more he got aggressive, and that’s when I started to realize, oh my God, this is serious. Like, he’s really going to try and force me to have sex with him.”
Reportedly after about 40 minutes of Talia fighting off Calloway from trying to take her clothes off, he finally gave up and began masturbating. It took her until now to speak out because “he was a celebrity and I was just a regular girl.” She also revealed that she spoke to nine other alleged victims who have shared similar stories of alleged sexual misconduct by the host.
One would never guess that A.J. would ever be accused of sexual misconduct after speaking with The Grio about advocating for women of color to speak out in October 2017: “I spoke to a lot of women today, and that’s one thing that they said…African-American women are sexually harassed more than women of other races or white women. We’ve got to support our sisters. We have to stand up for them.” Watch below:
And in a 2018 statement, Calloway denied Abrams allegations: “I was disappointed to read the false allegations about me in The Hollywood Reporter. As I have maintained from the beginning, these allegations are not true. When I was first notified about these allegations by law enforcement more than a decade ago, I fully cooperated from the beginning and the case was dismissed.”
Recently, a spokesperson for Extra released a statement about the allegations and admitted that they won’t affect his work on the show: “We take allegations made against our employees seriously and investigate appropriately. To date, we have not received a complaint about A.J. Calloway and his work on Extra.”
Even a reported sexual assault allegation should be taken seriously the first time, whether denied by the person in question or not, for instance, take all the claims made against R. Kelly, and the cultural impact of Lifetime’s Surviving R. Kelly documentary.
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