Jay-Z Accuser Recants, Swears She Never Met the Rapper

A Jane Doe filed a Manhattan federal court declaration stating her 2024 rape allegations against Jay-Z were false and that she never met him.

A woman who accused Jay-Z of raping her at age 13 has formally withdrawn the allegation in a declaration filed Thursday in Manhattan federal court. Identified only as Jane Doe, she wrote that 'Shawn Jay-Z Carter never raped me' and that she has never met or spoken to him, according to NPR and The Guardian. She added that there was 'no truth to any of my claims against Mr Carter' and acknowledged the accusations caused him 'immense pain, suffering, and damage that can never be fully undone.'

The lawsuit was filed in 2024 while the woman was represented by Texas attorney Tony Buzbee, who had brought more than a dozen sexual misconduct suits against Sean 'Diddy' Combs. It claimed Jay-Z and Combs drugged and raped her after an MTV Video Music Awards after-party in September 2000, when she was 13. Both men denied the claims, with Jay-Z calling them a 'fictional tale' and an extortion attempt. The suit was dropped in 2025, and in February of that year Carter sued the woman and Buzbee for malicious prosecution and defamation.

According to the declaration reported by RTE, the woman said she responded to a Facebook advertisement seeking people with sexual assault claims against Combs, and that the ad triggered memories of being raped at 13. She says she does not recall giving permission for lawyers to file the 2024 complaint and withdrew it after having doubts. Pulse Ghana reports she also said lawyers gave her $1,200 in cash for an NBC News interview and asked her to take a polygraph after inconsistencies emerged.

The recantation lands in the middle of an ongoing fight between Jay-Z and attorney Tony Buzbee. The Guardian reports Buzbee told Rolling Stone that if the woman now claims she lied, 'that's new information,' saying several lawyers had interacted with her before his involvement and heard the same account. NPR says the Buzbee Law Firm did not respond to a request for comment, and Pulse Ghana reports a California appeals court declined in September 2026 to revive Carter's claims against Buzbee over the handling of the earlier case.

This is a sworn, penalty-of-perjury repudiation of a case that touched two of hip-hop's most powerful figures, not a quiet dismissal. Her lawyer, James Blair Newman Jr., told outlets quoted by The Guardian and Pulse Ghana that she still believes she was assaulted but was mistaken in identifying Carter, and has offered Jay-Z and his family a sincere apology. Jay-Z had told GQ in March that he refused any settlement, saying 'I can't take a settlement - it ain't in my DNA... I would die.'

The woman has been dismissed as a defendant from Carter's malicious-prosecution lawsuit, but The Guardian reports he is still pursuing her former lawyers, arguing they should have known the allegations were 'contradicted by publicly available information, internally inconsistent, and unsupported by any credible story or investigation.' The timing also coincides with a career high point: NPR notes Jay-Z is marking the 30th anniversary of Reasonable Doubt with Yankee Stadium concerts and an HBO docuseries, JAŸ-Z In 8.