1995394 words · 2 min
"This Is the True Story": The Woman's Letter to Vibe
In 1995, the young woman from the sexual abuse trial contradicts Tupac's account from "Ready to Live" in Vibe, her view of the night at the hotel.
Original: Letter from the complainant, titled “The Alleged Rape” · Vibe · 1995
In April 1995, Vibe magazine published Tupac’s version of the events that sent him to prison under the title “Ready to Live”. Shortly thereafter, the young woman whose complaint in November 1993 had led to the criminal case spoke out. Until this letter to the editor, she writes, she had told her story only under oath in court. Publicly, only his version was known, and in the interview she saw herself misrepresented.
Contradiction from their first meeting
Even their first encounter at the club Nell’s she describes completely differently from Tupac. The advance on the dance floor came from him, and she broke it off immediately. The evening that followed at his hotel, by contrast, she describes as consensual.
A completely different course of events on the second night
For their second meeting, a few days later, the accounts diverge fundamentally. She had come to the hotel to see Tupac, the complainant writes. When other men entered the room, she stated clearly that she did not want this. She was held down and sexually abused by several men, Tupac included. Afterwards, they initially would not let her leave. When she asked him in tears how he could do this to her, he had her thrown out.
She stresses that it was not a setup and that she did not know the men around Tupac. She had not made the wisest decisions, but none of that justified what was done to her.
Conviction and prison sentence
On December 1, 1994, the jury in New York found Tupac guilty on two counts of first-degree sexual abuse and acquitted him of the more serious charges. In February 1995, he received one and a half to four and a half years in prison. A civil suit brought by the woman against him was later settled.
An equal voice in the archive
The letter is the only voice of the woman in the archive texts, and it stands on equal footing alongside Tupac’s account. This page deliberately does not name her and recounts the details of her account only as far as necessary for understanding. Anyone writing about Tupac’s life cannot bypass this chapter, nor her perspective.