Sexual Assault Allegations Against Ian Connor Dropped as New One Surfaces
You may have heard of Ian Connor, the designer/stylist who's been working closely with the likes of Kanye West and A$AP Rocky in recent years as a fashion and creative consultant. Back in April, a girl named Malika Anderson wrote a blog post detailing the time Connor allegedly raped her. Chicago artist Jean Deaux quickly backed her up, writing her own post claiming she was also raped by Connor. Now another woman has come forward.
Dekalb Police County Department have confirmed that any charges against Ian Connor have been dropped, but a new accuser, 19-year-old Kadiata Diallo, has emerged to talk with Daily Mail about new allegations.
In a new interview published today (June 1) in Daily Mail, Anderson and Diallo share details of the nights they were allegedly assaulted by Connor. Diallo tells Daily Mail she was a 16-year-old virgin before meeting Connor and that the social media star direct messaged her to hang out, but then forced her to have sex the second time they met. She tells Daily Mail "she felt too scared to make an official accusation, despite being encouraged to do so by an NYPD officer she spoke to shortly after the alleged attack." As of press time, it's unclear whether she ever filed a charge with the NYPD or not.
"The whole way home I was crying," Diallo describes in a Daily Mail video. "It was a big deal to me at the time because the way I was raised, sex before marriage is a huge deal so that made me feel ten times worse."
She continued, "[I] lost my virginity to someone I had just met and I did not even want to have sex with him."
The ordeal left Diallo depressed and confused. "If you say someone raped you, there's a whole lot of backlash that you got raped," she says. "[People] always try to victim blame and say that you're a liar. And that's not fair because who would want to lie about getting raped? It's not something you would lie about. I was just living with it for so long and it was so painful to live with something like that. I was so young."
Anderson tells a similar story in her interview, claiming that Connor messaged her to hang out when he was in Atlanta and pestered her for sex the third time the two met.
"I didn't want to date him. At the time, I was just confused. I didn't want to have sex but he just did it. It didn't feel right," says Anderson, who found out a week after the encounter that she had been infected with gonorrhea.
Neither of the women filed police reports against Connor after the attacks happened but mustered up the courage after having flashbacks about the rapes. Diallo and Anderson feel these are not isolated incidents and that they need to stand up and be a voice for the "trail of raped women around the country" that Connor has affected and potentially infected.
According to the Dekalb County Police Department, Anderson's case was officially closed yesterday (May 31) due to lack of physical evidence.
A statement from Ian Connor on the allegations is pending.
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