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Kanye West Sued for Sexual Harassment By Ex-Assistant Lauren Pisciotta

​​​​​​​View Date:2024-12-24 08:26:16

Kanye West is facing legal action from his former assistant. 

Lauren Pisciotta is suing West for a number of complaints, including wrongful termination, sexual harassment—quid pro quo and hostile environment—unlawful retaliation, unpaid wages and gender discrimination, as seen in documents obtained by E! News. 

Pisciotta worked for West for about a year and a half after she was hired by the "Runaway" rapper in July 2021. At the time, she was making around $1 million per year through social media and an OnlyFans account—of which she alleges in her suit that West approved. However a year later, she claims West asked that Pisciotta become "God like" and delete her OnlyFans account. According to the suit, West promised to pay Pisciotta $1 million in compensation for the loss of the account, but that he allegedly never paid. 

Additionally, Pisciotta claims in her suit that West sent her a multitude of inappropriate and graphically sexual messages and videos throughout her employment, examples of which included in the documents describe his sexual fantasies, sexual encounters with an unnamed model and other messages which "suggested or insinuated that Plaintiff [Pisciotta] wanted to have sex with Defendant [West] and actually had sexual intercourse with Defendant, when in fact she did not want to and never indeed did do."

Pisciotta also claims West called her regularly "under the guise of discussing work related topics" but that he would "masturbate during the phone conversation and would often ask Plaintiff if she could hear or guess what he was doing."

Additionally, Piscotta alleges that in mid-September 2022, she was offered a promotion to a Chief of Staff role that came with an accompanying raise which brought her annual salary from $1 million to $4 million.

Yet while Pisciotta says she accepted the role and began performing its duties accordingly, she claims "despite expressing their great satisfaction with Plaintiff's job performance, defendants continued to fail to pay Plaintiff as they had previously promised." The suit also says Pisciotta "advanced many costs necessary for the performance of her services" including "cell phone charges, meals and purchases."

Then, in October 2022, Pisciotta claimed her employment was terminated, at which time she was offered a severance of $3 million, which she accepted but says she was never paid. 

The documents say, "As a result of defendants' discriminatory, retaliatory and unlawful actions against her, Plaintiff has suffered and continues to suffer damages, in the form of lost wages and other employment benefits, and severe emotional and physical distress, the exact amount of which will be proven at trial."

E! News has reached out to West's rep, as well as Pisciotta's legal team, for comment but has not heard back. 

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