\n<\/p>\n
\n\tHip-hop producer Metro Boomin told jurors at his civil rape case on Wednesday that he had two consensual encounters with his accuser in 2016, always wore a condom, and couldn\u2019t wait for his trial to start so he could testify and give his side.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cWere you wrongly accused?\u201d his lawyer, Lawrence Hinkle, asked inside a federal courtroom in downtown Los Angeles.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cAbsolutely. I\u2019ve been thinking about this day for a year,\u201d the producer, whose legal name is Leland T. Wayne, told the jury. The influential producer, songwriter, and DJ said he found it \u201cpreposterous\u201d that plaintiff Vanessa LeMaistre had accused him of raping her in a hotel without a condom in 2016 after handing her a drink that allegedly caused her to \u201cblack out.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cI really don\u2019t know where to start. This is crazy. I can\u2019t even believe I\u2019m up here doing this right now,\u201d he said. \u201cFor her to accuse me of something like this, it\u2019s something I could never fathom. I can\u2019t even say what I think should happen to people who rape people.\u201d Wayne testified that he lost his mother to domestic abuse and believes sexual abusers \u201cshould be tortured and killed.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tAsked point-blank if he ever sexually assaulted LeMaistre, he said, \u201cAbsolutely not.\u201d Asked again minutes later, he said, \u201cNo way in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tWayne, 32, took the witness stand as his friend and fellow Atlanta-based artist Young Thug watched in the courtroom gallery. \u201cI\u2019m just here to support him,\u201d Young Thug told Rolling Stone<\/em> as he walked into the courthouse during the lunch break. \u201cHe\u2019s a longtime friend.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tEarlier on Wednesday, LeMaistre finished her own testimony in the case, telling jurors she was still reeling from the recent loss of her newborn son in 2016 when she visited Wayne at a Los Angeles recording studio after ingesting half of a Xanax. She said Wayne handed her a shot that she sipped shortly before she passed out. LeMaistre said she later found herself drifting in and out of consciousness in a hotel room with Wayne on top of her, penetrating her vaginally and then performing oral sex on her. When she finally woke up completely hours later, Wayne allegedly ushered her out of a side door and pointed her to a car that returned her to the studio to retrieve her car, she testified.<\/p>\n \t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n \n\t\u201cI was confused,\u201d she told jurors of her immediate reaction. She said she didn\u2019t go to the police right away or confront Wayne because she was still processing what happened. \u201cIt was very foggy for me waking up the next day,\u201d she explained.<\/p>\n \n\tLeMaistre, who was 30 when she first met a 22-year-old Wayne in Las Vegas earlier that year, testified that she spoke about the alleged assault with a mental health professional she was seeing at a treatment center called Prototypes in the fall of 2016. She later discussed it with professionals again when she called a pair of rape hotlines in 2024, she said.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cHaving lost my son, and the defendant assaulting me, have been the two, by far, worst things I\u2019ve ever experienced in my life. It has been excruciatingly painful,\u201d LeMaistre said on the witness stand. \u201cThis stole the past nine years of my life. I haven\u2019t been able to have any healthy relationships. I want to get married one day.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tDuring a fierce cross-examination by Wayne\u2019s other lawyer, Justin H. Sanders, LeMaistre defended a series of handwritten notes she wrote that were turned over to the defense in discovery. In journal entries dated June 14, 2017, LeMaistre used two different pen colors as she authored what appeared to be a conversation with someone named \u201cChrisie.\u201d \u201cAll of it was me just self-soothing,\u201d she testified.<\/p>\n \t\tRelated Content<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n \n\t\u201cWhen should I hit back Metro?\u201d she wrote in the journal. \u201cWill I sleep with him again?\u201d Then switching to Chrisie\u2019s voice, she wrote, \u201cYes, and it will be beautiful, great, amazing.\u201d Asked what she meant by \u201cagain,\u201d LeMaistre said \u201ctechnically\u201d she already had slept with Wayne, but \u201cthe conditions were rape.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tSanders then turned to notes LeMaistre wrote during a 2024 trip to Peru, where she engaged in an extended \u201cAyahuasca ceremony,\u201d a spiritual ritual involving the ingestion of a psychoactive plant used by indigenous cultures in the Amazon. In the notes titled \u201cPlan Ayahuasca Gave Me,\u201d LeMaistre wrote that she intended to \u201cblow the whistle on Metro Boomin.\u201d She also wrote that she planned to contact the law firm that singer Casandra \u201cCassie\u201d Ventura used to sue music mogul Sean Combs, and further planned to publish her \u201cdate rape\u201d allegations in a post on social media. \u201cWe\u2019re asking for 3.4 million to 3.7 million,\u201d she wrote in her sometimes admittedly illegible handwriting.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cThat was the number given to me,\u201d Le Maistre testified about the amounts. Asked if she meant that the numbers were \u201cgiven\u201d to her during the Ayahuasca ceremony, she said, \u201cCorrect.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tWith eight jurors listening intently, LeMaistre said that when she first heard the Wayne-produced song \u201cRap Saved Me\u201d in 2017, she believed the lyrics were about her. In the chorus, artists 21 Savage and Offset rap, \u201cShe took a Xanny, then she fainted. I\u2019m from the gutter, ain\u2019t no changing. From the gutter, rap saved me. She drive me crazy, have my baby.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tLeMaistre also testified that she found out she was pregnant after visiting a Planned Parenthood in late 2016. As Sanders walked her through her medical records from Planned Parenthood, he showed jurors forms listed her last menstrual cycle had been on Oct. 1, 2016, and her \u201cmost recent unprotected sexual intercourse\u201d as having been on Oct. 13, 2016. She denied experiencing any instances of \u201ccoercion\u201d or intimate partner violence, the medical records said. Another record dated Nov. 7, 2016, said the gestational age of the fetus was five weeks and two days. LeMaistre, who had a non-surgical abortion to end the pregnancy, later contacted Planned Parenthood on Feb. 10, 2025, asking to amend the reported dates in her records and remove her \u201cdenial of coercion.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cYou knew when you tried to change those records that it was the only way you could make your story stick,\u201d Sanders challenged LeMaistre. \u201cYou had to change the dates of the last unprotected sex, correct?\u201d Sanders asked. LeMaistre denied the allegation. Sanders appeared to be suggesting that LeMaistre wanted to link her pregnancy to Wayne because it would support her claims that Wayne had unprotected sex with her and a reason to allegedly pen the lyrics \u201chave my baby.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tIn his own testimony, Wayne said he \u201cnever\u201d has sex without a condom because he\u2019s not ready to be a father. \u201cEven at that time, my high school sweetheart and I were still using condoms. There was no way this girl I just met in Las Vegas, that I had unprotected sex with her,\u201d he testified.<\/p>\n \n\tAsked if there was any truth to the allegation he personally authored or even \u201csuggested\u201d the cited lyrics in \u201cRap Saved Me,\u201d Wayne replied, \u201cNone whatsoever. I just made the beat.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\tTrending Stories<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n \n\tWhile LeMaistre was the sole witness for her entire case, Wayne called a clinical psychologist to the stand to testify about her assessment of the plaintiff. Dr. April Thames, chief psychologist at UCLA\u2019s Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, told jurors that she reviewed LeMaistre\u2019s medical records and conducted her own 90-minute to two-hour exam with the plaintiff. She said she personally diagnosed LeMaistre with \u201cborderline personality disorder with psychotic features.\u201d Under cross-examination, she admitted that LeMaistre had not formally received that diagnosis before, though she previously had been diagnosed with major depressive disorder.<\/p>\n \n\tBoth sides rested their cases on Wednesday afternoon. Closing arguments are set for Thursday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Hip-hop producer Metro Boomin told jurors at his civil rape case on Wednesday that he had two consensual encounters with his accuser in 2016, always wore a condom, and couldn\u2019t wait for his trial to start so he could testify and give his side. \u201cWere you wrongly accused?\u201d his lawyer, Lawrence Hinkle, asked inside a<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23631,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[14411,2346,14410,358,3468,11054,2131],"class_list":{"0":"post-23630","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-boomin","9":"tag-civil","10":"tag-metro","11":"tag-rape","12":"tag-side","13":"tag-testifies","14":"tag-trial"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23630","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23630"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23630\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/23631"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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