A petition demanding radio host Charlamagne Tha God be fired from the radio talk show, “The Breakfast Club,” has garnered nearly 6,000 signatures. The petition urges iHeartMedia, which runs the popular radio program, to remove Charlamagne over a rape allegation from 17 years ago that’s recently resurfaced.
“We want to send a powerful message to all of the people who like to prey on innocent children that it’s not going to happen on our watch,” reads the petition, which was posted on Care2. “No matter how much money or influence you have, we will not allow you to hurt our children.”
As Billboard reports, the petition was launched on Wednesday, one day after Jessica Reid, the woman accusing Charlamagne of raping her when she was just 15-years-old, told The Blast that she wants to re-open a criminal case against Charlamagne (also known as Lenard Larry McKelvey).
In an interview with The Blast, Reid’s mother, Joslyn, admits she told her teenage daughter to stop cooperating with the prosecution saying she wanted to “protect her daughter from suffering.” Reid says her lack of cooperation meant attorneys couldn’t convict McKelvey on the charge he was arrested for, criminal sexual conduct with a minor. Instead, he pleaded guilty to contributing to the delinquency of a minor, for which the then-22-year-old McKelvey received three years probation.
Details of the alleged assault, which happened in South Carolina, are outlined by Billboard:
According to a 2001 police report from the Berkeley County Sheriff’s Office, Reid and a friend claimed to have been picked up and brought to a short-stay Naval housing facility and given a liquid to drink that tasted like soda. That was the last thing Reid’s friend said she remembered before waking up with a man trying to kiss her. She claimed to have forced the man away and went to find Reid, who was in the room across from where she was, naked and crying, stating she had been raped. The girls were brought to a local hospital, where staff corroborated that a sexual assault had occurred and took a statement implicating McKelvey as the assailant.
McKelvey has discussed the alleged assault before. In 2013, McKelvey spoke with DJ Akademics about the incident, saying he was falsely accused of rape.
McKelvey tells Akademiks that Reid (whom he doesn’t refer to by name in the video) attended a party he threw for his cousin, who had just graduated high school.
“She got drunk, high, whatever, whatever,” McKelvey said. “Something happened in the room with a couple of my dudes.”
He says he wasn’t at the party at the time of the assault but found out afterward from his friends that Reid was “bugging out.” McKelvey claims police pinned the rape charges on him after he offered to take responsibility for what happened at the party, and that the charges were reduced when his DNA didn’t match what had been collected from Reid.
iHeartMedia has yet to comment on the resurfaced allegations.