Disgraced hip hop producer Afrika Bambaataa has lost a civil case suing him for child sexual abuse and trafficking after failing to show up in court.
The male plaintiff, known as John Doe, filed a suit in 2021 alleging that Bambaataa sexually abused him at age 12 between 1991 and 1995. Bambaataa was in his 30s at the time according to the report. Judge Alexander M Tisch granted a default judgment “without opposition” in New York state’s supreme court.
Bambaataa, born Lance Taylor, has never responded to these specific allegations, Rolling Stone reports.
The hip hop icon has faced numerous allegations of molesting boys.
In 2016, three Bronx men accused Bambaataa of molestation — although one of them, former music industry executive and politician Ronald Savage, recently recanted his claims, which dated back to when he was 15 and working as a “crate boy” for Universal Zulu Nation, the group Bambaataa co-founded.
Savage alleged that Bambaataa had repeatedly abused him in 1980, when he was 15 and Bambaataa 23. In 2024 he recanted his allegations, saying that he met Bambaataa at a club he had used a fake ID to enter.
“Bambaataa is not a pedophile”
“Bambaataa is not a pedophile and, in my eyes, he was doing something that was consensual with someone that he thought was of age,” he told AllHipHop. “I wish, back in 2016, I remembered about the fake ID.”
Several other alleged victims — making for a total of 12, as per Rolling Stone — came forward after the initial accusations. In 2016, Bambaataa denied “any and all allegations of any type of sexual molestation of anyone,” calling them “baseless.”
Born and raised in the Bronx, Bambaataa first exercised his leadership skills in street gangs in his youth. By 1973, he founded the Zulu Nation, an alternative youth organization focused on uplifting Black culture.
Throughout the 70s, Bambaataa began organizing neighborhood block parties where he would DJ. He was praised for his turnstile techniques which led to the establishment of two rap crews: Jazzy 5 and Soulsonic Force. The latter group achieve international acclaim with their 1982 single “Planet Rock.”