Content warning: this article about Diplo contains references to sexual assault
DJ, producer, and Major Lazer member Diplo, real name Thomas Wesley Pentz, may face criminal charges following a police investigation into sexual misconduct allegations.
As Buzzfeed News report, the investigation into Pentz, 42, was set in motion by a complaint made with the LAPD in October 2020. A 25-year-old woman has accused the DJ of recording sexually explicit videos of her without her consent, distributing at least one of them, and knowingly infecting her with chlamydia.
In October 2020, the accuser came forward with allegations in a series of tweets alleging that Diplo groomed her and hired a private investigator to follow her after the two had an argument. She wrote that the investigator threatened her and her parents in an attempt to scare her out of sharing “disgusting details.”
“The private investigator stated to me that he knew my address, he knew my parents address, he knew my place of work as well as my parents place to work. Take that as you may but most people will take that as a threat,” she wrote.
In the same thread, she claims to have “SPECIFICALLY asked him not” to film one of their encounters, to which he allegedly responded, “fuck it. I’m recording this.”
A Twitter account with one follower and the handle “Jeanne Yang” responded to the accuser’s tweets with a sexually explicit photo of her. In court filings, the woman details that though she filmed some of the videos herself, Pentz was the only person she had shared them with, and believes he was responsible for the tweets.
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The woman was granted a temporary restraining order against Pentz in November 2020, saying that the DJ could not “distribute any image of petitioner’s intimate body part, or an image depicting petitioner engaged in an act of sexual intercourse, sodomy, oral copulation, sexual penetration, or an image of masturbation,” without her consent.
Three weeks later, on the day of the scheduled hearing for the woman’s restraining order, Pentz retaliated by filing for a temporary restraining order against her. He alleged that in June 2020, the woman shared an image to social media of Pentz “naked body from behind, including his naked buttocks.” He also accused the woman of sending sexually explicit videos of Pentz and an unidentified woman to the mother of his children.
In November 2020, Pentz’s attorney Bryan J. Freedman released a statement denying the allegations. “Unfortunately, this individual has been harassing my client and his family for more than a year and has repeatedly refused to stop doing so,” he said. “To be clear, in no way has my client violated any law. In fact, he has repeatedly made it clear that he wants nothing whatsoever to do with this person—and simply needs her ongoing harassment of his family to end.”
According to legal filings acquired by BuzzFeed News, the woman claims that Pentz reached out to her on Twitter when she was 17 and he was 36. The pair kept up conversation and the accuser had consensual intercourse with him in March 2018, when she was 21.
The woman alleged that in July 2019, following a concert in Las Vegas, Pentz “held her down in his hotel suite and raped her.” Las Vegas police declined to filed charges against him for the alleged rape.
Medical records show that days after the alleged encounter took place, the woman tested positive for chlamydia. In the court filings, the woman claims that Pentz was her first, and at that time only, sexual partner.
Under California law both recording a video without a person’s consent and knowingly passing on a sexually transmitted infection are misdemeanors.
You can read the full report here.
