Superfly actor and rapper Kaalan Walker was found guilty on Monday of raping six victims – three of them 16-year-old aspiring models – and sexually assaulting a seventh woman between 2013 and late 2018.
The actor – who starred in 2017’s Kings with Halle Berry and played gang member Juju in 2018’s Superfly – hung his head and sobbed as a jury’s split verdict was read out in Los Angeles. He was acquitted of charges related to three of the 10 victims in the case, including two charges of violent rape.
“I have not raped anyone, Your Honor. I didn’t rape anyone,” exclaimed Walker, 27, as he was taken away in handcuffs after the jury left. If convicted, he faces up to 100 years of life. His attorney, Andrew Flier, quickly vowed to appeal.
During her closing arguments last week, Assistant District Attorney Cynthia Wallace labeled Walker a “serial rapist” who dubiously made Drake nameless with most of his victims and promised dates that never materialized.
She and colleague Yasmin Fardghassemi told jurors during the six-week trial that when Walker combined his moderate celebrity status with the “little blue tick” on his social media profiles, he was able to defuse his victims’ defenses and to lure them to distant locations with promised photo shoots or video gigs.
“We believe the jury gave these victims back their votes with this verdict,” Wallace told Rolling Stone. “That was very demanding. He chose these girls and appealed to their dreams and hopes and gave Drake a name and used his connection to Halle Berry to take these girls somewhere and earn their trust. Once they were there, it wasn’t about doing photoshoots, it was about attacking them.”
Flier said he plans to file a motion for a new trial based on several decisions by Judge Joseph Brandolino that limited the information Walker could provide about the victims in the case.
“I don’t think he got a fair trial and the fact that he had three acquittals for three of the victims speaks volumes. I think it will make his appeal issues much more meritorious. But I’m disappointed with the verdicts,” Flier told Rolling Stone. “The defense was prevented from calling witnesses to show the same pattern but no rape. The judge did not allow us to call witnesses on the same matter, but on the contrary.”
The jury, which included three black women, heard from both the accused victims and Walker during the trial. One of the victims described how she was a 16-year-old aspiring model when Walker offered her a photoshoot. She testified that her mother and stepfather drove her to Walker’s apartment building. She said he separated her from her family and manipulated her into making an impromptu sex tape in which she claimed he could introduce her to Drake and that she would never fulfill her dream of becoming a Victoria’s Secret model without to show a more provocative side.
“He talked about Drake and took her to a Drake party. what is he telling her “Well you know what? If you want to do all those things, if you want to be at parties with Drake, if you want to be a Victoria’s Secret model, you know what we have to do? We need to shoot a sex tape,'” Wallace said during their closure. “He’s a 22-year-old man who tells a 16-year-old girl, ‘We have to make a sextape.'”
The girl told jurors she resisted “several times,” but Walker “doesn’t take no for an answer,” Wallace said.
“He keeps insisting, pushing and insisting, talking over her” and eventually wearing the girl down until she finally gives in, Wallace said. “She said, ‘Well, I was like, ‘He knows all these people. He’s going to help me.’ I thought what I was doing would help my career.’”
Wallace said the law is clear that a child’s consent is “never” a defense against statutory rape. “Minors aren’t as emotionally and mentally developed as adults, and we know that,” Wallace said. “That is why children are protected from grown men. You don’t have to work much on them. You promise them a few things and get a naked 16-year-old girl to penetrate you from behind.”
Wallace tells Rolling Stone there is “no evidence [Walker] had any connection to Drake. It was just one thing he used to lure the girls in. It was a trap, a ruse, his way of getting these girls.
One of Walker’s convictions Monday related to the rape of a woman before a Tyga show at the Belasco nightclub in Los Angeles in January 2014. The woman testified that she was too drunk on a party bus to get on the show, and was led to a car by someone who promised to help her but ended up raping her. The woman had no idea who her attacker was until she received a rape investigation and the DNA in her vagina matched Walker’s, Wallace said.