A woman who claimed Jay-Z raped her when she was 13 has now formally stated that her allegation was not true.
In a 2024 lawsuit, the unidentified woman alleged that Jay-Z, whose real name is Shawn Carter, along with Sean “Diddy” Combs, drugged and raped her at a party following the 2000 MTV Video Music Awards.
Both celebrities denied the accusation, and she withdrew the lawsuit last year. Carter subsequently filed a lawsuit against her and her attorneys.
In a statement submitted on Thursday in that case, she wrote, “Shawn ‘Jay-Z’ Carter never raped me. I have never met or spoken to Mr. Carter. Mr. Carter never engaged in any inappropriate conduct toward me whatsoever.”
The woman, identified in court records by the pseudonym Jane Doe, also stated, “My claims that Mr. Carter and Mr. Combs raped me while a third celebrity, [name redacted], watched are false. None of my claims against Mr. Carter have any truth to them.”
“I understand my false accusations have caused Mr. Carter immense pain, suffering, and damage that can never be fully undone.”
Carter had strongly denied the accusations, calling them a “blackmail attempt” and describing them as “frivolous, fictitious, and appalling allegations.”
When the accuser withdrew her case in February 2025, the rapper, who is married to singer Beyoncé, said, “The trauma that my wife, my children, loved ones, and I have endured can never be dismissed.”
The woman, who is from Alabama, has now been dropped from Carter’s lawsuit.
She stated that she had not received any money from the rap superstar or anyone acting on his behalf and that she had not been paid to make her latest declaration.
The rapper is still pursuing a lawsuit against the woman’s former lawyers, who are led by Tony Buzbee.
In a statement to Rolling Stone, which was the first to report Jane Doe’s new declaration, Buzbee said he had not seen it.
He said, “We have multiple lawyers (at least four) who dealt with Ms. Doe long before she met me. She gave the exact same story to each. If for some reason now she is claiming she lied to us and the court, that’s new information.”
When Carter brought his lawsuit against the woman and her attorneys in February 2025, Buzbee asserted at the time that Carter’s investigators had “repeatedly harassed, threatened, and harangued this poor woman for weeks, trying to intimidate her and make her recant her story.”
In her latest declaration, the woman stated, “I never received any threat from Mr. Carter or anyone acting on his behalf.”
Describing the events that led to her allegation, the woman said she came across an advert on Facebook in September or October 2024 seeking people who might have sexual assault claims against Combs. “The ad triggered memories of being raped when I was 13 years old,” she said.
She said a law firm got in touch with her, but she was never given a draft of the lawsuit containing her allegations and had not authorized it before it was filed in October 2024.
She further stated that Buzbee and other lawyers representing her filed it “without conducting any independent investigation, background inquiry, or due diligence, and without obtaining any corroboration of the allegations.”
She said, “The October Complaint alleges that Mr. Carter and Mr. Combs raped me when I was a minor while an unnamed celebrity watched. As discussed above, these allegations were false.”
Buzbee additionally represents many other individuals who have leveled accusations at Combs.
Combs refuted Jane Doe’s allegations, which his attorney at the time characterized as one of several civil cases “pushed forward by an attorney more focused on media headlines than legal merit.”
In July 2025, a criminal court found Combs guilty of prostitution-related charges involving his two former girlfriends, and he is presently serving a four-year prison term.
