New York law unleashes ‘avalanche’ of historic sexual abuse claims

One evening in 2001, music executive Drew Dixon was being driven home from a work event in New York with her boss, where she hoped to play him a demo from a singer she wanted to sign. 

But shortly into the ride, her boss groped and kissed her without her consent, she alleges. She pushed him away while his driver “stared straight ahead” in the front seat. She froze and her boss digitally penetrated her, also without consent, Dixon alleged in a lawsuit filed in Manhattan federal court this month. 

According to the suit, this was the second time that year that Dixon had been assaulted by Antonio Marquis “LA” Reid, a Grammy-winning producer and executive who has been a powerful figure in the music business since the 1990s, when he helped develop stars such as Mariah Carey, TLC and Usher. 

At the time of the alleged incident, Dixon stayed quiet, fearing that reporting it would be “career ending”. 

“There [was] nothing in the culture that indicated . . . that there was any reason for me to believe that coming forward would preserve my professional momentum, my healthcare at the time, my livelihood, my options in life,” Dixon said in an interview. With a recent cancer diagnosis, Dixon feared that she would lose her health insurance if she lost her job.

Now, two decades later, Dixon says she is looking to “reclaim some fraction of what I’ve lost”.

Her lawsuit is one of almost three thousand filed over the past year in New York state under the Adult Survivors Act, which temporarily suspended the statute of limitations for civil claims brought by victims of historic sexual abuse.

Journalist E Jean Carroll won $5mn in damages from Donald Trump in a claim brought under the act, in which she alleged the real estate mogul had assaulted her in a Manhattan department store in the 1990s. Other high-profile cases were filed against rapper Sean “Diddy” Combs, who settled with his accuser, and against comedians Russell Brand and Bill Cosby, whose cases remain unresolved.

But as the Thanksgiving deadline approached, lawyers said they were dealing with an “avalanche” of last-minute claims, the vast majority of which had been brought by former inmates against New York prisons.

“By the close of business this week, I will have under the Adult Survivors Act close to 630 cases filed, 600 of which consist of cases filed on behalf of formerly incarcerated women who were sexually abused by correctional officers,” said Anna Kull, a partner at Levy Konigsberg. 

The total number of claims to date is still dwarfed by the 11,000 brought under the ASA’s predecessor, the Child Victims Act, which saw landmark suits brought against the Catholic Church and Boy Scouts of America. Campaigners expect that cases like Dixon’s will drum up further publicity for the ASA in its final days.

“We hope that people knew about the law and still have time and were able to make a decision about whether or not it also was right for them,” said Michael Polenberg of Safe Horizons, a charity that backed the legislation that led to the ASA.

“It can be a mistake to look at the number of lawsuits and say, oh, there should have been more,” he added, “because there were folks who knew about the Adult Survivors Act and maybe in consultation with their family, with an attorney, decided that moving forward may not have been in their best interest. And that’s OK.”

“It takes time for a victim to process what has happened to them, and then they have to find the courage to report,” said Kenya Davis, a partner at Boies Schiller, the law firm representing Dixon. “Why are we surprised that victims don’t just run to the local police station and say, ‘hey, look, this happened to me yesterday, I want something done about it’?” 

The ASA should be “federalised or adopted in every state”, Davis argued. 

Anna Kull, a partner at Levy Konigsberg, said the statutory limitation period for claims over sex crimes should be lifted permanently, so that alleged perpetrators could be identified or sued “at any point in time”.

“Survivors are coming forward in the eleventh hour because they have been truly conflicted about whether or not they should file a lawsuit,” she added. “There’s just such a fear of retribution and retaliation”.

Dixon first came forward against Reid in a 2017 New York Times article, in which she and other women accused music executive Russell Simmons of rape. Simmons has denied the allegations. Dixon again spoke out in a 2020 HBO documentary called On The Record. 

“Frankly, having come forward six years ago, in many ways, it has made my life worse. I am free. But I’m still largely unemployable for some reason”, said Dixon, who according to her lawsuit, believes she has been “blackballed” for speaking out against Reid and Simmons. 

Dixon started her career through internships at record labels after graduating from Stanford in 1992. She worked her way up to senior jobs at Def Jam and Arista Records, where she worked with music mogul Clive Davis and stars such as Whitney Houston.

At Arista, Dixon alleges in her complaint that after she declined Reid’s advances, he retaliated against her professionally. She alleges that when she brought in a young Kanye West to audition for Reid, he passed on the rapper and “proceeded to berate” Dixon about the “waste of his time”. Dixon believes Reid’s retaliation resulted in “decades of lost earnings” costing her millions of dollars, according to the suit. 

She left Arista in 2002 to pursue an MBA at Harvard, and returned to the industry upon graduation in 2004, getting a job working with John Legend at Homeschool Records. But when she started running into Reid and his friends at industry events, she went into a “severe depression” and sought therapy for PTSD. 

Many years later, during the Me Too era in 2017, Reid left his post as chief executive of Epic Records after a female employee accused him of harassment. Reid told The New York Times in 2017: “I’m proud of my record promoting, supporting and uplifting women at every company I’ve ever run. That notwithstanding, if I have ever said anything capable of being misinterpreted, I apologise unreservedly.”  

Reid could not be immediately reached for comment.

Reid’s career has carried on. He recently reunited with Usher, who is set to headline next year’s Super Bowl. Reid and Usher have partnered with Gamma, a buzzy music start-up that launched this year with $1bn in funding from Apple, Todd Boehly’s Eldridge and indie film studio A24. 

Several other powerful music figures have recently been accused of sexual misconduct under New York’s ASA. Some advocates say these allegations might finally bring a Me Too-type reckoning for the music industry. For Dixon, the hope is that the ASA gives victims of abuse a chance to come forward and “be heard in a rigorous setting, in a legal venue, so that they can reclaim their full story and heal”.

“You’re never going to get back what you lost,” she says: “This is a pain that stays with you for the rest of your life”.