Nicki Minaj may have planned to spend the week celebrating her big ESSENCE Fest performance, but instead, she’s dealing with the fallout of her husband’s legal troubles.
According to People, Kenneth Petty has been sentenced to three years probation, a year of in-home detention and ordered to pay a $55,000 fine after pleading guilty to failing to register as a sex offender when the couple moved from New York to California. The case started in November 2019, when Petty was pulled over by the Beverly Hills Police Department and they found out he was a registered sex offender in New York, but not in California. This led to his arrest in March 2020.
Petty is required to register as a level two offender due to his 1995 conviction of attempted rape of a 16-year-old. In that case, he was sentenced to 18 to 54 months, and ultimately spent four years in prison.
As previously reported by The Root, his victim, Jennifer Hough, is suing Petty for “unspecified damages for the intentional infliction of emotional distress.” She claims the couple tried to harass and intimidate her into recanting the rape accusations against Petty. While Minaj was previously named in the suit, she was dropped from it in January.
“The case against Nicki was voluntarily dismissed. The case against Kenneth Petty is still ongoing. Stay tuned,” Hough’s lawyer, Tyrone Blackburn, told People at the time.
When the suit was filed, Hough did an interview with The Real, explaining why she decided to come forward and tell her story publicly.
“I’m tired of being afraid, I feel like the actions that were taken in regards to this whole situation have put me in a different type of fear at my age now,” Hough told co-host Garcelle Beauvais. “And it was wrong and I don’t want to be afraid anymore. So the only way not to be afraid is to continue to speak up.”