A woman suing hip-hop music producer Metro Boomin testified Tuesday in Los Angeles that he raped her in a hotel room in 2016, and she realized she should sue him eight years later when she was high on the psychedelic plant Ayahuasca during a therapy session in Peru.
“I recall being instructed from the medicine that this is the root of your issues for the past 10 years, this incident with the defendant,” Vanessa LeMaistre testified. “This is the root of continual trauma and pain and suffering, and that I needed to address this, seek justice and contact lawyers.”
LeMaistre said she didn’t hallucinate on Ayahuasca, and she’s always known she couldn’t have consented to sex with Metro, legal name Leland Tyler Wayne, after she took half a Xanax pill and Metro gave her a liquor shot that left her “completely incapacitated.”
But, LeMaistre said, “I didn’t know consent means when someone says no or they’re not able to consent, that that still is rape.”
“Did Ayahuasca inform you that you had been sexually assaulted by the defendant?” lawyer Michael J. Willemin asked.
“No, it did not,” LeMaistre answered.
LeMaistre said she believes the 2017 song “Rap Saved Me,” which Metro produced for rappers 21 Savage and Offset, references her assault with the lines, “She took a Xanny (Yeah), then she fainted (Yeah) | I’m from the gutter (Hey), ain’t no changing.”
LeMaistre will continue testifying in U.S. District Judge R. Gary Klausner’s courtroom on Wednesday as the only plaintiff’s witness in a four-day trial over a lawsuit filed in October 2024 by Willemin’s Wigdor LLP, the New York City law firm that sued Sean “Diddy” Combs on behalf of Cassie Ventura and has in the last two years sued dozens of other celebrities alleging sexual assault.
Source: https://www.legalaffairsandtrials.com/p/hip-hop-producer-metro-boomin-begins
