Rapper Ali B could face 3 years in prison for raping, sexually assaulting three women
The Public Prosecution Service (OM) demanded 3 years in prison against Ali B on Friday. The 42-year-old rapper is charged with two counts of rape and two counts of sexual assault against three women - Naomi, the former The Voice participant Jill Helena, and singer Ellen ten Dam, NU.nl reports.
According to the OM, Ali B attacked all three women in the same way. He pinned them down “against a wall, a bed, or a car door so that they couldn’t leave.” The incidents happened in the evening or at night and in a place where the women were dependent on him, “a place where they did not feel at home.”
Naomi said that Ali B attacked her during a writers’ camp in Heiloo in 2018. She was having sex with rapper Ronnie Flex when Ali B groped her. “I asked what he was doing and if he never heard of consent,” she said. Naomi continued that Ali B then ridiculed her and continued to push to the extent that she eventually felt intimidated to give in. The OM said: “She felt that she could no longer resist and, therefore, stopped doing so.”
Jill Helena described her attack as “threatening.” Ali B, with whom she had an affair several years earlier after appearing on The Voice, took her to a deserted forest path in the Amsterdamse Bos after a performance in 2018. In the car, with no one else in sight, he coerced her into masturbating him, she said.
Singer Ellen Ten Damme said that Ali B raped her in a hotel room in Morocco, where she was staying for recordings of the television program Ali B en de Muziekkaravaan. He came into her room and forced her to have sex with him, she said.
Ali B denied the women’s allegation. “I don’t want to call her a liar, but this is not how I experienced it,” he said about Jill’s account, for example.
The OM said it realizes that this case has gotten a lot of media attention and has “a major impact on society, the victims, but also the suspect.” Ali B was loved by the public and someone with prestige in the music industry, the OM said. “But this case shows that transgressive behavior, despite the suspect’s fame, is not tolerated.”
The OM was scheduled to make its sentence recommendation on Thursday, but the case was delayed by a day after a new witness came forward on Wednesday evening. The witness said she took pity on a girl who had been raped in Heiloo in 2018. She saw the girl crying at a bus station and gave her a lift on her bicycle, the witness said.
Ali B’s lawyers will also speak on Friday, and then both parties will have the opportunity to respond. The court provisionally scheduled its ruling for June 27.
