Jay-Z rape accuser makes U-turn, says her allegation was false

A woman who accused American rapper, Shawn Corey Carter, popularly known as Jay-Z of raping her when she was 13 has formally withdrawn the allegation, saying the claims she made against the rapper were false.

The woman, known in court documents by the pseudonym Jane Doe, made the declaration in a legal case brought by Jay-Z, whose real name is Shawn Carter, after she previously sued him and Sean “Diddy” Combs over an alleged 2000 assault.

In her latest statement, she said she had never met or spoken to Carter and denied that he had behaved inappropriately towards her.

She wrote: “Shawn ‘Jay-Z’ Carter never raped me. I have never met or spoken to Mr. Carter. Mr. Carter never engaged in any inappropriate conduct toward me whatsoever.”

She further acknowledged that her earlier claims against Carter and Combs were untrue, adding: “My claims that Mr Carter and Mr Combs raped me while a third celebrity, [name redacted] watched are false. There is no truth to any of my claims against Mr Carter.

“I understand my false accusations have caused Mr Carter immense pain, suffering, and damage that can never be fully undone.”

The woman had filed the lawsuit in 2024, alleging that she was drugged and raped by Carter and Combs at a party following the MTV Video Music Awards in 2000.

Both men denied the allegations. The woman later withdrew the lawsuit in February 2025, after which Carter filed a separate case against her and the lawyers who represented her.

She has now been removed as a defendant from Carter’s lawsuit.

In her new declaration, the woman said her allegation emerged after she saw a Facebook advertisement in September or October 2024 seeking people who might have sexual assault claims against Combs.

“The ad triggered memories of being raped when I was 13 years old,” she said.

She said a law firm subsequently contacted her but did not show her a draft of the complaint before it was filed in October 2024.

According to her declaration, she did not authorise the complaint before it was submitted and said the lawyers representing her had filed it “without conducting any independent investigation, background inquiry, or due diligence, and without obtaining any corroboration of the allegations”.

She also directly addressed the allegations contained in the original lawsuit, saying: “The October Complaint alleges that Mr Carter and Mr Combs raped me when I was a minor while an unnamed celebrity watched. As discussed above, these allegations were false.”

The woman said she had not received money from Carter or anyone acting for him and had not been paid to make the latest declaration.

She also rejected an earlier claim that Carter’s investigators had intimidated her into changing her account.

In the new statement, she said: “I never received any threat from Mr Carter or anyone acting on his behalf.”

Carter had previously described the allegations as a “blackmail attempt” and called them “frivolous, fictitious and appalling allegations”.

After the woman abandoned her original case in February 2025, Carter said: “The trauma that my wife, my children, loved ones and I have endured can never be dismissed.”

Carter’s legal action against the woman’s former lawyers, led by attorney Tony Buzbee, remains ongoing.

Buzbee told Rolling Stone, which first reported the woman’s new declaration, that he had not seen the latest statement.

He said: “We have multiple lawyers (at least four) who dealt with Ms Doe long before she met me. She gave the exact same story to each. If for some reason now she is claiming she lied to us and the court, that’s new information.”

When Carter filed his lawsuit against the woman and her lawyers in February 2025, Buzbee alleged that Carter’s investigators had “repeatedly harassed, threatened and harangued this poor woman for weeks, trying to intimidate her and make her recant her story”.

Buzbee represents several other people who have made allegations against Combs.

Combs also denied the woman’s allegations. His lawyer previously described the case as one of several civil claims “pushed forward by an attorney more focused on media headlines than legal merit”.

(BBC News)