Superfly actor and rapper Kaalan Walker once “manipulated” a 16-year-old girl into filming an impromptu sextape at his apartment building while her mother, who thought her daughter was posing for headshots, waited outside, a prosecutor told jurors on Wednesday concluding arguments at Walker’s serial rape trial in Los Angeles.
Walker was 22 at the time and allegedly told the girl he could introduce her to famous rapper Drake if she simply followed his example, Assistant District Attorney Cynthia Wallace said, adding that Walker named Drake with most of the 10 young and dubious names dropped naïve Jane Does, whose allegations bolster his felony charge.
“There is no evidence that he had any connection with Drake. It was just one thing he lured the girls into. It was a trap, a ruse, his way of getting these girls,” Wallace tells Rolling Stone.
Speaking to the judges, Wallace said that when Walker separated the young girl from her mother that day in 2017 and began asking about her career aspirations, he embraced the girl’s dream of becoming a Victoria’s Secret model.
“We need to take more provocative photos. We need to sexualize you a bit,'” Walker reportedly said to the girl when he convinced her to strip down to her underwear, Wallace said.
“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 do a sex tape,'” Wallace said. “He’s a 22-year-old man who tells a 16-year-old girl, ‘We have to make a sex tape.'”
The girl testified during the six-week trial that she fought back “several times,” but Walker “doesn’t take no for an answer,” Wallace said.
“He keeps insisting, pushing and insisting, talking over her,” 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.”
“He manipulated her and twisted her dreams and manipulated her into sex,” Wallace said. “He used her for his own amusement, and then he discarded her and her dreams.”
Walker, 27, faces life in prison if convicted as charged. He has pleaded not guilty to five counts of violent rape — one related to another minor — two counts of rape by an intoxicating substance, two counts of statutory rape, one count of violent sexual penetration and one count of assault . Two charges related to an 11th Jane Doe were dropped during the trial after the alleged victim declined to testify, prosecutors told Rolling Stone.
Walker’s defense attorney Andrew Flier will deliver his closing arguments on Thursday. He said during the opening statement last month that Walker may have been a lying Lothario, but he never forced anyone to have sex.
“They fell for his BS. That’s what this case is about. He made false promises and they fell for it, and now it’s time for revenge,” Flier said when the case began on March 8. “They gave up their integrity and their bodies and that’s why they’re still here. It’s revenge for Mr. Walker.”
According to Wallace, Walker’s first crime in the case was the violent rape of a 16-year-old victim in 2013. Walker allegedly contacted the girl online and offered her $5,000 to appear in a music video. After the girl took a train to meet him, thinking she was going to sign a contract, Wallace raped her as she lay there crying, believing her life was in danger, Wallace said.
“She didn’t expect to lose her virginity that way,” Wallace told the jury. “That memory and that trauma will stay with her forever.”
Wallace said the “Achilles’ heel” of Walker’s defense was the alleged victim who was raped in a parking lot outside 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 win entry to 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.
While Walker claims his accusers consented to sex because they wanted to capitalize on his fame and industry connections, Wallace said the woman who was raped outside of the Tyga show was too drunk for it. And either way, the attack took place before Walker appeared in 2017’s Kings with Halle Berry and played gang member Juju in Superfly, a 2018 action film produced by rapper Future as a remake of the 1972 blaxploitation film Super Fly.
Walker, who is out on bail, listened to Wallace’s closing arguments from a defense table and frequently leaned forward to confer with Flier through a Plexiglas screen. He testified for several hours in his own defense during the trial, Flier said.
“He put on a little show,” Wallace told jurors Wednesday, arguing Walker “deliberately lied” on the witness stand, even as he claimed he didn’t know his youngest victims were 16. to lie to you.”
Wallace showed the jury a text message that one of the alleged victims had sent to Walker: “I’m interested in modeling. I’m 16 and I’m 5’5.””
“It’s rock solid,” Wallace said.