Sunday [November 10] following his coming forward with claims of sexual assault against a Hollywood executive, Terry Crews took to Twitter to post a screenshot of a recent email addressed to him from Russell Simmons.
It was earlier this month that Crews, a former NFL linebacker-turned action and comedy star added an unexpected voice to the sexual assault conversation after coming forward to speak out against a moment in which he was inappropriately groped at a part by a prominent Hollywood agent.
"I'm looking at him, and he’s basically staring at me, and he’s sticking his tongue out, and it’s overtly sexual kind of tongue moves," he revealed in a recent visit to Good Morning America as he recalled a disturbing encounter with Adam Venit of William Morris Endeavor Entertainment. "I’m sitting there like, it’s a party, it’s packed...and I’m looking like, is this a joke? He comes over to me, and I stick my hand out, and he literally takes his hand, and puts it, and squeezes my genitals," he continues. "I jumped back, like, ‘Hey! Hey!’ and he’s still sticking his tongue out and all this stuff and I go, ‘Dude, what are you doing? What are you doing?' And then he comes back again, he won't stop, and I got forceful and pushed him back."
"I have never felt more emasculated, more objectified, I was horrified," the Brooklyn Nine-Nine star went on to say. “I will not be shamed. I did nothing wrong. It was foul to the core, and it still shocks me.
In a screenshot of the email that Simmons allegedly sent Crews following his recent revelations, the mogul apparently tried to get Terry Crew to drop the situation altogether and give Venit "a pass." "Did he ever apologize," writes the very brief exchange. "Give the agent a pass...ask that he be reinstated." In the shot posted to Twitter, Crews pens, "NO ONE GETS A PASS."
All the while, Russell Simmons has also been accused of sexual misconduct. It is model Keri Claussen Khalighi who has accused Simmons of coercing her into performing oral sex on him and briefly penetrating her without her consent in 1991 when she was 17. Her account of the incident goes on to implicate Simmons' former protégé Brett Ratner as having been there throughout the whole ordeal and watching.
Simmons has gone on to deny the allegations “Everything that occurred between Keri and me occurred with her full consent and participation," he stated while Brett Ratner's attorney says Ratner denies ever witnessing Khalighi protest.