Tyler Perry accuser Derek Dixon details sexual assault allegations in TV interview
Derek Dixon, an actor who previously accused filmmaker Tyler Perry of sexual assault, has given an interview detailing the allegations.
In June, Dixon accused Perry of sexual harassment, workplace gender violence and sexual assault in a $260 million lawsuit that was filed in Los Angeles. Perry immediately denied the allegations.
Dixon, who previously worked with Perry on The Oval and Ruthless, spoke to ABC News and detailed an alleged sexual assault that he claims occurred at the director’s residence in Atlanta.
The actor said: “We were both walking back to the guest area, where I’d stayed before, and there’s this health monitor scale on the way. I was like, ‘What is that?’ And he said, ‘Well you have to be in your underwear to measure.’ He reached down and pulled my underwear down and grabbed my ass and I tried to stop him and pull back my underwear up.”
Dixon continued: “He kind of grabbed my arms and said, ‘No no no, it’s okay. Just go with it.’ And I said, ‘Stop, I don’t want to be naked. I don’t want this.’ And he said, ‘I’m not going to hurt you.'”
He added of the alleged incident, “Unless someone’s been through something where they have their control over their body taken away, you don’t really understand the kind of feelings that you get in that moment.” Dixon also said, “Every thought came into my head: to run, to fight, to freeze. I didn’t know what to do.”
Dixon claims he locked himself in the bathroom of the guesthouse, and told ABC that Perry contacted him the following day to apologise.
In the same interview, Dixon detailed another prior alleged incident when Perry allegedly “climbed into bed” with him when he was staying at the guest house and “started rubbing my leg”. He shared, “I jumped up out of bed. He said, ‘Turn around so I can look at you,’ and just commented on how I looked. And he got up and left. I thought after that instance, it was pretty clear that I was not interested in that type of a relationship.”
Dixon left The Oval last September and filed the lawsuit this June. He said to ABC News about the last three months: “It’s been hard. There’s a lot of shame around it. Just trying to think what you could have done better and having to deal with the judgment of how you could’ve ended it better without being in that situation.”
He also said of the $260 million lawsuit: “Part of that number is my lost job — my lost income, the loss of the show. The other part of that is a deterrent of how to stop a billionaire who won’t stop himself from doing this. I hope you take accountability for what happened and I hope this has taught you not to treat your employees this way. Never use someone’s dream to coerce them into a relationship. That’s not professional.”
Perry’s lawyer, Matthew Boyd, issued a statement to ABC News in response to Dixon’s interview, which reads, “This is an individual who got close to Tyler Perry for what now appears to be nothing more than setting up a scam.”
Boyd added: “Tyler will not be shaken down and we are confident these fabricated claims of harassment will fail.”
For help, advice or more information regarding sexual harassment, assault and rape in the UK, visit the Rape Crisis charity website. In the US, visit RAINN.
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