Afrika Bambaataa lost a civil case accusing him of child sexual abuse and trafficking after a default judgment.
Per a report from Matthew Strauss for Pitchfork, Bambaataa, born Lance Taylor, failed to enter a legal response to the John Doe suit first filed in 2021. In the suit, Bambaataa was accused of abusing the alleged victim when they were 12 years old. Bambaataa, who has also faced other accusations over the years, was in his mid-30s at the time.
In September 2021, news broke that both Bambaataa and Universal Zulu Nation had been named in a New York lawsuit. At the time, as seen here, the Zulu Nation issued a statement calling this a “personal matter” for Bambaataa and not a reflection of the organization itself.
A default judgment in the suit has now been granted “without opposition” by a judge, per reports. At this time, Bambaataa has not publicly addressed this development.
Complex has reached out to reps for Bambaataa and a legal rep for the accuser for comment. This story may be updated.
In a statement shared with Rolling Stone in 2016, the same year he was accused of sexually abusing a former Zulu Nation member, Bambaataa said that he denied “any and all allegations of any type of sexual molestation of anyone.” He also called the allegations “baseless.”
The 2016 accusations focused on claims made by Ronald Savage, who was last year reported to have walked back his accusations. According to Savage, who cited his forgotten use of a fake ID when amending his claims, Bambaataa, who has faced similar allegations from other men, “is not a pedophile.”
