Producer Diplo is being accused of distributing revenge porn, again. Shelly Auguste, the woman who came forward with the allegations has been in a legal battle with Diplo since 2020. And despite the initial accusations not leading to criminal charges, the new case is with the Los Angeles Police Department under review.
Two years ago, Shelly filed a police report alleging he recorded and distributed sexual content without her permission. She alleged a fake Twitter page, which she believed was being run by Diplo, shared a photo of her vagina and breasts online as retribution for speaking out about her experiences with him.
This time, Shelly is suing Diplo for a slew of things, including sexual battery, gender violence, intentional intrusion into private affairs, battery, assault, defamation, and more – and the court date is expected to take place in April 2024.
Diplo is countersuing Shelly for stalking, trespassing, and the distribution of private materials. He’s also made claims that her mental health is “unstable” and his attorney says this is all part of a “smear campaign”.
Shelly has been very outspoken about her ongoing battle with Diplo on social media, and has shared much of her experience on TikTok. And the picture she is painting is of Diplo’s pattern of (allegedly) abusing young, Black women, and the media’s complacency in keeping him from fully being held accountable.
On her timeline, she’s been helping to amplify the story another young Black woman, Gabriella, is telling. Gabriella alleges Diplo first made contact with her when she was 15, and shared a disturbing screenshot of his first few messages to her, acknowledging that she was underage before exchanging information with her and asking to meet up.
Both women’s accounts are being amplified by actress Alexa Nikolas, who starred in Zoey 101 alongside Jamie Lynn Spears (and who revealed herself to be the actress Britney Spears apologized to in her memoir). Alexa, who has made disturbing claims about her relationship with disgraced Nickelodeon showrunner Dan Schneider, and accused her ex-husband, Michael Milosh, of sexual assault, is an advocate for assault survivors. She lends her platform to people who have come forward about their experiences with predators.
In videos posted to Alexa’s Twitter account and also to her YouTube channel, Alexa does a really good job of highlighting some of the issues women face in trying to get their abusers to be held accountable, particularly in Hollywood. She discusses power dynamics, and media complacency in misrepresenting the stories and accounts of women like Shelly.
In this tweet, Shelly suggests articles have repeatedly misrepresented what actually transpired and failed to mention that she was granted a temporary restraining order against Diplo. Gabriella, too, shared an entire thread that starts off showing this inaccurate, misleading and vilifying headline, and the strategic use of a racy image of Shelly to diminish the claims she’s making.
In Alexa’s latest video, she spends a lot of time talking about the ongoing allegations Diplo has faced in recent years and how she’s worked with his victims to amplify their stories. One of the points she makes is that in so many of the stories, including this one by Pitchfork, the full picture isn’t always painted, and the stories of victims are often told in isolation.
In that article, Gabriella’s story was also supposed to be featured. Instead, only Shelly’s appeared. According to Alexa, the problem of omitting accounts that corroborate or support the claims of other victims is that it makes that first story harder to believe, as if it were an isolated incident, when we know these allegations have been ongoing.
Alexa points out that over the years, women like Azealia Banks and Ke$ha, who each have massive platforms, have all expressed their support for these women in one way or another – but these examples of victim support are hardly discussed in articles.
Back in 2016, Ke$ha was touring with Diplo’s Mad Decent Block Party. But when disturbing rumours about him started to swirl, she pulled out. Trying to find coverage of this is next to impossible, and the only news stories that are out there are about them touring together.
Back in 2020, Azealia Banks was a guest on the Cheapys Two Cents podcast and admitted to having sex with Diplo when she was 17. She credited him with helping her launch her music career, but said she had to give him some “teenage p---y” to do it, before making the following claim:
“He’s always been preying on young ethnic girls.”
Say what you want about Azealia Banks, but when it comes to exposing people, she’s got gall, and she’s got a pretty decent track record for what she’s been right about, particularly when it comes to predators in Hollywood.
To Alexa’s point, only in doing research for this story am I learning about just how terrible Diplo’s track record is. He’s been accused of knowingly infecting women with sexually transmitted diseases. Back in 2017, he shared a really disturbing tweet about sending his cv to R. Kelly for a sex cult membership before deleting it 20 minutes later. And in July of 2021, the Baltimore Orioles cancelled a postgame concert featuring Diplo when two lawsuits accused him of sexual assault. When a fan urged him to find a way to still play in Baltimore, he responded with this tweet:
Revenge porn isn’t just a Hollywood issue. It is a literal genre of porn that people get off on, and there are websites that help facilitate the distribution of it. And because the legalities surrounding it are fairly new, it can be tough to understand, and therefore tough to prosecute, particularly when it’s posted, as Shelly pointed out, by anonymous social media pages.
But revenge porn in Hollywood tends to come with an added layer of protection for people like Diplo. Because they can afford the best lawyers money can buy, meanwhile, Shelly has had to crowdsource the money for her legal fees. It doesn’t help that the media is making her out to be an “obsessed fan”, either.
As I mentioned, I really had to dig to find the stories that Alexa points out are missing. That’s always an indication to me that the person in question has got a fully stacked, very talented and very powerful PR and legal team. And wouldn’t you know, Diplo’s lawyer is none other than Bryan Freedman, who has represented other stars, like Kevin Spacey, who have found themselves in the midst of sexual assault allegations and lawsuits. But according to this article, something not nearly as widely reported as it should be is that Bryan once paid a $40,000 settlement after being accused of gang raping a 17-year-old while he was in college.
We’ve seen a lot of big names in piping hot water lately, facing allegations similar to what Bryan himself once faced. Between Diddy, Russell Simmons, and even Nelly, whose praises I was singing the other day over his rekindled romance with Ashanti until a reader reminded me that he, too, faced a few sexual assault allegations as recently as a few years ago. And the list goes on. And the steeper the pockets, the more protection these men can buy themselves. And the idea that the very protection they are buying can often come from men like Bryan is disturbing, to say the least.
Between media complacency and hush money and legal fee funds being in abundance, there are still so many women being silenced because they can’t afford to come forward. It could be the toll it can take on their mental health, or it could be literally not being able to secure the resources needed to launch a lawsuit. The reminder here is that just because we are hearing about experiences women like Shelly, Gabriella, Cassie and Azealia have had more, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s happening any less. And sometimes, we have to dig deep to find the stories that aren’t being told, especially when media outlets are being complacent in keeping them that way.
