The woman who accused Jay-Z of raping her when she was 13 has officially withdrawn her accusations, saying she had never met the rap star, reports UNN, citing The Guardian.
The woman, whose name has not been disclosed, initially made the allegations in a lawsuit filed in 2024. She claimed that Jay-Z (real name Shawn Carter), together with Sean Combs (known as P Diddy), drugged and raped her. According to her, the incident occurred at a party following the 2000 MTV Video Music Awards ceremony.
Jay-Z denied the allegations, calling them an attempt at extortion; Combs also denied any involvement. Jay-Z’s lawyer emphasized that the events described took place within a time frame that made them physically impossible. The woman withdrew the lawsuit in 2025, and Jay-Z filed a countersuit.
Amid the proceedings in the case, the woman said that her previous statements were false. "Sean ‘Jay-Z’ Carter never raped me. I never met or spoke with Mr. Carter. Mr. Carter never engaged in any inappropriate conduct toward me," her statement, obtained by Rolling Stone, said.
She added that there was "no truth whatsoever to my allegations against Mr. Carter. I understand that my false allegations caused Mr. Carter enormous pain, suffering, and harm that cannot be fully remedied."
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The woman has now been removed from the list of defendants in Jay-Z’s lawsuit, although the rapper continues to sue her former lawyers. He claims they should have known that the allegations "contradicted publicly available information, were internally inconsistent, and were not supported by any credible account or investigation." Earlier this month, when filing a motion to dismiss the case, attorney Tony Buzbee and his colleagues called the lawsuit "malicious persecution."
Commenting on the woman’s new statement, Buzbee told Rolling Stone: "If for some reason she is now claiming that she lied to us and to the court, that is new information."
The woman’s current lawyer, James Blair Newman Jr., said: "Our client continues to maintain that she was a victim of sexual assault, but she was completely mistaken in identifying Mr. Carter as the perpetrator." Continuing her statement, the woman said that memories of sexual abuse were triggered by an advertisement calling on Combs’s victims to come forward. Combs was investigated in connection with a number of alleged sexual assault cases; ultimately—unlike in this woman’s case—he was found guilty on two charges related to transporting individuals for the purpose of prostitution and was sentenced in October 2025 to four years and two months in prison.
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The woman said that she did not know a lawsuit had been filed on her behalf, and that when she expressed doubts about her claims, the lawsuit was withdrawn.
Jay-Z had previously spoken about how these allegations affected his life. When the case was dismissed, he said: "The trauma that I, my wife, my children, and my loved ones had to endure cannot simply be ignored." And in an interview with GQ magazine in March, he said: "I haven’t felt that kind of anger in a long time—it was uncontrollable anger. You can’t accuse someone of something like that unless you are completely certain."
He also said that he refused to settle the lawsuit out of court: "I can’t reach a settlement—it goes against my nature... I would rather die."