Back in June, comedian Jeff Ross was accused of entering into a sexual relationship with a 15-year-old girl in 1998 when he was 33. He promptly denied the allegations and announced his plans to take legal action, and now his accuser Jessica Radtke has further detailed the alleged relationship further in an interview with Vulture.
Radtke said she first met Ross when she got a job at the Boston Comedy Club. "I'll never forget what he was wearing," she explained. "It was an orange long-sleeve shirt, green cargo shorts, and white Adidas shell toes with black stripes on them. And he did this thing—he was looking at me, and he winked at me. Something in me was like, Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, because no one had ever winked at me like that."
At the time, her father wasn't in the picture due to alcohol abuse issues. However, Ross allegedly asked her father for permission to take her on a date. Shortly after, she moved some of her belongings into his apartment, and her father told Vulture that he was aware his daughter was in a sexual relationship with Ross. "I didn’t really monitor what she was doing because she was savvy enough to take the subway and go around, and she was hanging out with adults,” he explained of Radtke and Ross' relationship. “I trusted her judgment."
Radtke alleges that she and Ross had "a lot" of unprotected sex during their relationship, and he had her take explicit photos. "He would have a preference that I shave my vagina completely off. He was very mad whenever I wore red lipstick or really dark makeup," she said. "He didn’t like it if I looked too grown-up or too ‘whore-y.’ He liked that I was innocent."
Their alleged relationship came to end shortly after she turned 18, as she said she came across other sexual images in his apartment. "They were not women. They didn’t have any pubic hair,” she told Vulture. Eventually they got back together, but the relationship came to an end again after she turned 22. “Somehow he explained it to me, and I felt like a hypocrite, so I went back."
The story only first gained traction in June due to a viral thread shared by comedian Pallavi Gunalan on Twitter, but Radtke first leveled the allegations against Ross on Facebook in 2019. In a video she posted, she said, "Please note where his hand is on my 15-year-old body," showing a picture of her with Ross at Jerry Stiller's roast in 1999. She also showed other photos featuring her and Ross, including one of her wearing his signature fedora in what appears to be his apartment.
In his post addressing the allegations, Ross said the story was "old news" and had been "investigated numerous times." He added, "I intend to take legal action based on these untrue, horrific allegations because no one, no matter how sick they are, should be allowed to continue to try and benefit from false stories while attempting to destroy others." He also claimed his accuser and her husband have "harassed" him for years.
