In her first television interview, Jennifer Hough appeared on The Real to talk about her issues with Nicki Minaj and husband Kenneth Petty. Hough alleged Petty raped her at knifepoint in 1994, and last month filed a lawsuit against the couple—whose son turns 1 this month—claiming years of relentless harassment.
“I’m tired of being afraid,” she said. “The only way not be afraid is to continue to speak up.”
She described the 1994 incident, which Petty was convicted of in 1995, saying she was on her way to high school when he began to assault her, grabbing her by her jacket and pressing something she believed to be a gun against her back. He then allegedly took her to a house nearby, throwing her on a bed as he forcefully took off her clothes.
“I don’t know why it didn’t dawn on me to, like, really fight,” Hough told the hosts with tears in her eyes. “I just held on to my pants, and he’d hold my arms down. He squeezed the sides of my stomach so hard, and so I’d let go and as soon as I let go he’d grab my pants.”
After the assault, she said Petty beat his chest in the mirror and said, “I’m the man, I’m the man.” She ran to school shortly after, and when she reported the incident to the police, he was arrested. At the time, Petty’s family claimed to police that the two were in a relationship, which Hough said was not the case.
“We were never in a relationship,” Hough said. “We never talked on the phone, we never hung out together. I just knew him from the neighbourhood.”
Petty’s family allegedly pressured Jennifer to drop the charges. During the ordeal, Hough told someone she wanted to “drop the charges” because of the turmoil she was going through, but she never recanted or changed her story, despite what Nicki Minaj has previously claimed.
“I don’t think I thought about justice, because I was still blaming myself. I thought it was something that I did, or didn’t do. So I don’t think I thought about if I got justice, I didn’t. I just knew he did what he did and he went to jail, and I had to leave my family I had to leave my home, and I had to move away. Never really gave it much thought,” Hough said.
She said that as a result of the rape, she has lived for years with insecurities and has hidden herself out of fear of “attracing a certain type of attention.” When she first heard about Petty’s relationship with Nicki Minaj, she said she was “afraid of being known as the person he violated.”
Near the end of the first part of the interview (more is forthcoming), Hough addressed Minaj’s claims about the case. “He was 15, she was 16…in a relationship,” she wrote in an Instagram comment when a fan asked about the case. “But go awf, internet. Y’all can’t run my life.”
Hough gave her take on Nicki’s comment, and said it forced her to relive painful memories. “It was a lie,” she said on The Real of Nicki’s comments. “We both were 16, we were never in a relationship. I just felt, woman to woman, that was wrong of her. I don’t know you, and you don’t know me to know that statement you put out to the world. … You have 150-something million followers, [and] they all believed it. It hurt coming from another woman.”
Watch the first part of Jennifer Hough’s interview up top.
