A lawyer representing several women who have accused rapper T.I. and his wife Tameka “Tiny” Harris of sexual assault says he has had six more potential victims come forward after he sent a letter to officials in two states that called for a criminal investigation into the disturbing allegations.
“If I was a prosecutor, I’d have brought charges already,” New York-based attorney Tyrone A. Blackburn told The Daily Beast.
He is currently representing 11 accusers, including eight women who claim they were sexually assaulted, drugged, or kidnapped by T.I., Tiny, or a member of their inner circle. Three other clients, including a male, allege the celebrity couple made “terroristic threats” toward them.
Blackburn sent out five letters to authorities in both California and Georgia that detailed his clients’ claims against T.I., real name Clifford J. Harris, and Tiny last month. The accusations date back to 2005 and are as recent as late-2017, The New York Times first reported.
“These women are unaware of each other, and without any leading on my part, they recount eerily similar events of sexual abuse, forced ingestion of illegal narcotics, kidnapping, terroristic threats and false imprisonment,” the letter from Blackburn states. It concludes by imploring law enforcement officials to “tackle and end the stream depravity being committed” by the celebrity couple.
Blackburn confirmed to The Daily Beast that he has spoken to two offices and has begun preliminary conversations surrounding his clients’ claims with them. He declined to name which offices he was speaking with in order to preserve the “integrity of the investigation.”
“This is very sensitive, and I do not want the Harrises to get off on a technicality because I may have disclosed something prematurely or because something may have gotten out,” Blackburn said. “For me, the goal is to get justice for these women, hands down. This is not about money. This is not about clout.”
“These women have come forward because there’s a void that has been left in their lives and the people that created the void are Clifford and Tameka Harris. Granted, the void can never be fully filled, but at least it can be put back together if these cases are handled with care, are thoroughly investigated, indictments are executed, and the Harrises are prosecuted.”
Blackburn’s letters, seen by The Daily Beast, contain unsettling accounts from five women, including a former member of the military, an exotic dancer, a high schooler who interned at T.I.’s studio and record label Grand Hustle, and an old friend of Tiny’s who later became her assistant.
An alleged victim who served in the U.S. Air Force claims she met T.I. and Tiny at a club in Los Angeles in September 2005. At one point during the night, Tiny allegedly offered the woman, who was around 22 at the time, a sip of her drink. After returning to the couple’s hotel room with other guests, the woman began feeling “lightheaded and dizzy,” despite only having one drink of her own, plus the drink Tiny offered her, according to the letter.
When the other guests left, Tiny allegedly suggested they all “freshen up” and washed both T.I. and the woman in the shower. They returned to the bedroom and Tiny began “rubbing her buttock” on the woman’s back to give her a "back butt massage,” the letter claims. The woman began throwing up and T.I. allegedly tried to put his foot into her vagina. “She told him, no, and the next thing she remembers was waking up naked on the couch with a towel thrown over her with a very sore vagina,” the letter alleges.
Another accuser claims she was 17 years old when she began interning for the celebrity couple in 2006. She alleges that while on a tour bus, Tiny offered her a drink and gave her two pills, which made her feel “hot and sweaty… [and she] began hallucinating and felt like she was floating.”
Tiny allegedly brought her to the back of the bus where the bedroom was located and told her to undress in order to “cool off.” The accuser claims she had been throwing up when T.I. came over and began complimenting her appearance while Tiny encouraged her to keep drinking. The then-teenager passed out and woke up the next morning “naked on a bed… bleeding from her vagina. She also felt discomfort in her anus,” the letter claims.
She maintains she was taken home by an employee of T.I. and Tiny’s. The man is accused of making her take the morning-after pill, allegedly telling her “she needs to learn to keep her mouth shut” and “if she did not that bad things could happen to her and her family.”
After she began defecating on herself in her sleep, she was taken by a family member to the hospital and learned she had endured “trauma to her anal cavity due to intense anal penetration,” the letter claims.
T.I. and Tameka 'Tiny' Harris
Prince Williams/GettyA lawyer for the celebrity couple, Steve Sadow, said in a statement to The New York Times that his clients “deny in the strongest possible terms these baseless and unjustified allegations.”
He added they “fully expect” if the claims are “fairly investigated, no charges will be forthcoming,” calling the accusations “a sordid shakedown campaign.”
But Blackburn is adamant his clients aren’t seeking any monetary gain by coming forward. “This is all about holding the Harrises accountable for their actions, full stop,” he said.
When contacted by The Daily Beast on Friday in regard to Blackburn’s potential new clients, Sadow said in an email, “respectfully, when Blackburn exposes his would-be accusers to the light of day by revealing their names, I will have a real comment. Hiding their identities makes it impossible for me to do so.”
The claims against T.I. and Tiny first surfaced in January when Sabrina Peterson, a former friend of the Harris family, claimed T.I. had put a gun to her head at a birthday party in 2009. She went on Instagram Live to further explain the incident and the trauma she’s allegedly suffered due to the altercation.
Afterwards, “the floodgates just opened” and she said she began receiving messages from other women in Atlanta who claimed they were assaulted by the couple, posting dozens of the screenshots on her Instagram account.
Blackburn said he came to represent the victims after being referred to them by Peterson, who he had met in 2019 at a Forbes event. Peterson, who filed a defamation suit against the Harrises this week, is included in the 11 clients Blackburn is representing.
T.I. and Tiny, who have been married for 10 years and share three biological children, put out a statement soon after Peterson’s posts began circulating, denying the “egregiously appalling” allegations. Still, filming for the rapper’s popular reality show T.I. & Tiny: Friends & Family Hustle was suspended last month to “gather more information,” according to a spokesperson for MTV.
