Nicki Minaj’s husband Kenneth Petty has added legal issues to his already complicated rap sheet. Petty has been sentenced for failing to register as a sex offender in the state of California where he and Minaj currently live. He pleaded guilty to the charges against him in Sept. 2021 and has been sentenced to both house arrest and monitoring, probation, and fines, per Entertainment Tonight. “Kenneth Petty pleaded guilty in September 2021 to one count of failure to register as a sex offender,” a public information officer for the U.S. Attorney’s office told the media outlet. “Yesterday afternoon, U.S. District Judge Michael W. Fitzgerald sentenced Mr. Petty to three years of probation, one year of home confinement, and ordered him to pay a fine of $55,000.”
Petty’s sex offender registration is due to a 1994 incident. Jennifer Hough, a childhood friend of Petty’s, reported that he raped her at knifepoint when she was 16. Petty was also 16 at the time and charged with first-degree rape. Initially, he denied Hough’s allegation before pleading guilty to attempted rape. Petty served more than four years in prison and was ordered to register as a sex offender following his release.
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In 2021, Hough appeared on the now-canceled daytime talk show The Real to discuss the incident. She also alleged that Petty and Minaj had handlers harassing her to stop speaking about it, and even offered her hush money, which she says she denied.
Regarding whether she believes justice was served in the case, she said at the time: “I don’t think I thought about justice because I was still blaming myself. I thought it was something that I did or didn’t do, so I don’t think I thought about if I got justice, I just knew he did what he did and he went to jail. I had to leave my family, I had to leave my home and I had to move away.”
In Nov. 2019, during a traffic stop, law enforcement discovered that Petty had yet to register as a sex offender after moving from New York to California. He was indicted for failing to register as a sex offender in California in March 2020. He self-surrendered and was released on a $20,000 bond.
