A Timeline of All the Allegations Against T.I. and Tiny

Photo: Paras Griffin/Getty Images for BET

Atlanta rapper T.I. and his wife, Xscape member Tameka “Tiny” Harris, are being sued for allegedly drugging and sexually assaulting a woman in 2005. In a civil lawsuit filed January 2 and obtained by USA Today, a Jane Doe accuser claims that she was given a spiked drink in a nightclub before the couple brought her to a hotel room, “forced her to get naked,” and sexually assaulted her. The industry power couple has faced — and repeatedly denied — allegations of drugging, sex trafficking, rape, and sexual coercion in California, Georgia, Nevada, and Florida. “I will say this: Whatever we ever have done has been done with consensual adults who into what we into and like what we like,” T.I. said after the first set of allegations from Sabrina Peterson. “If we want something, we know exactly where to go get it.” The disturbing claims against T.I and Tiny first began circulating on social media in 2021. A subsequent investigation by the Los Angeles Police Department was closed due to the statute of limitations. (The new lawsuit was filed under a California law that grants a temporary window for certain sexual-assault and -abuse claims past the statute of limitations.) Below, a timeline of all the allegations against the couple.

January 25, 2021: Sabrina Peterson, an entrepreneur and former friend of the couple, accuses T.I. on Instagram of once holding her at gunpoint in front of her kids. In the comments of the since-deleted post, she alleges that this happened while she was in an altercation with an assistant of T.I.’s who treated Tiny “like a slave.”

January 26, 2021: Tiny shares a photo on Instagram of T.I. with Peterson’s son. “He was just uncle two years ago … 🤔now when did you say my husband assaulted you?” she wrote, calling for Peterson to stop “harassing” her family.

January 28, 2021: Peterson starts posting screenshots on her Instagram Story of DMs allegedly from more than two dozen sexual-abuse victims of the couple. The allegations include that T.I. and Tiny pressured them to remove their clothes, take drugs, and have sex with them or others. Some alleged victims claim to have lost consciousness while with the couple and experienced memory loss afterward.

January 29, 2021: The Harrises issue a statement denying the “egregiously appalling” allegations, adding that they have had “difficulty” with Peterson for more than a decade.

T.I. also posts an eight-minute Instagram video response. “What we not gon’ do is open up the door to my bedroom,” he says in part. “I will say this: Whatever we ever have done has been done with consensual adults who into what we into and like what we like. If we want something, we know exactly where to go get it.”

February 5, 2021: MTV confirms that production on the reality show T.I. & Tiny: Friends & Family Hustle is on pause due to the “serious nature of the allegations” against the couple.

February 19, 2021: Peterson’s lawyer, Tyrone A. Blackburn, sends letters to law enforcement in Georgia and California asking for criminal investigations on behalf of 11 new accusers whose allegations span more than a decade. One victim alleges that Tiny offered her alcohol and pills when she was a 17-year-old intern at T.I. and Tiny’s studio in 2006. According to the letters, she passed out and woke up the next morning “bleeding from her vagina” and feeling “discomfort in her anus,” and an associate of Tiny’s allegedly gave her a morning-after pill. The letters from the 11 victims describe what Blackburn calls “eerily similar events of sexual abuse, forced ingestion of illegal narcotics, kidnapping, terroristic threats and false imprisonment.” T.I. and Tiny deny the allegations.

February 28, 2021: The New York Times reports that it has conducted interviews that support the accounts of five of alleged victims from the letters. In three cases, the Times also reportedly reviewed text messages and photos that match the allegations.

March 1, 2021: Peterson sues T.I. and Tiny for defamation in Los Angeles Superior Court, alleging that she has been harassed by the celebrity couple’s fans and that her business has suffered because they called her a liar.

March 9, 2021: Blackburn tells the Daily Beast that since sending the letters, he has spoken with six new alleged victims of T.I. and Tiny. He confirms to Vulture that he is now representing one of those victims, who claims to have been “drugged and trafficked in Nevada, California, and Florida over three days” by the couple.

May 17, 2021: The Los Angeles Police Department confirms it is investigating T.I. and Tiny for sexual assault and drugging. This comes after a woman filed a police report in April containing a disturbing account of T.I. allegedly putting his toes in the accuser’s vagina after drugging her. T.I. and Tiny claim in a statement that they have not been contacted by any member of law enforcement.

May 18, 2021: The Las Vegas Police Department confirms that it has closed a case against T.I. and Tiny because a Nevada police report filed that month involved an incident from 2010, outside of the state’s statute of limitations for sexual assault.

June 8, 2021: T.I. refers to “lying-ass bitches” in a new song, “What It’s Come To.” The music video includes audio of Peterson offering to drop her defamation suit if the couple told “the truth” and apologized.

September 16, 2021: Los Angeles prosecutors announce that T.I. and Tiny won’t be charged following the LAPD’s investigation since it centered on an alleged 2005 incident that is past California’s statute of limitations on sexual abuse.

October 16, 2023: T.I. and Tiny file a response to Peterson’s 2021 defamation suit. Per Rolling Stone, they claim they were telling the truth and had “no malice” when they called her a liar.

October 17, 2023: A judge rules that Peterson must pay $96,703 to cover T.I. and Tiny’s legal fees for their motion that got five of Peterson’s seven claims dismissed, Rolling Stone reports. “She’s eager to have her day in court,” Blackburn said after the hearing. “She’s eager to have her voice heard and to prove once and for all she was not lying when she said T.I. put a gun to her head.”

January 2, 2024: An anonymous accuser sues T.I. and Tiny for sexual assault thanks to a California lookback law that opens a window for claims of sexual assault and abuse. The suit is tied to an alleged 2005 incident that was described in Blackburn’s 2021 letters and the subsequent Los Angeles police report. Per a copy of the complaint obtained by USA Today, the woman states that she met the couple in a nightclub when she was in her 20s and serving in the U.S. Air Force. After Tiny offered her a drink that she alleges was spiked with drugs, she claims that she passed out and was taken to a hotel room. There, she accuses Tiny of holding her down while T.I. penetrated her with his toes, among other claims.

The Harrises acknowledge that the suit comes from a familiar accuser. “This plaintiff has been threatening to file this lawsuit for THREE years,” the couple says in a statement responding to the suit. “For THREE years, we have emphatically and categorically denied these allegations. For THREE years we have maintained our innocence and refused to pay these extortionate demands for things we didn’t do.”

January 4, 2024: Blackburn shares an Instagram post stating that he is preparing to take legal action on behalf of other survivors in coming weeks and months. The California lookback law temporarily allows civil suits for certain sexual assault claims past the statute of limitations when “one or more entities are legally responsible for damages and the entity or their agents engaged in a ‘cover up.’” Blackburn specifically notes in his caption that anyone sexually assaulted by T.I. and/or Tiny in California since 2009 can also take legal action until 2026. “Happy filing 😇,” he concluded.