Earlier this year we broke the story of Aussie rapper Zheani Sparkes accusing South African band Die Antwoord (Ninja, in particular) of some pretty gross things.
Last time we followed the story up, the band was relentlessly bullying the young girl from Brisbane, including sharing revenge porn images of her (a crime in Queensland, where Sparkes lives and Girl HQ is based).
If you need to catch up on those stories, you can check them out here and here and here.
Now someone close to the band has dobbed them in for something equally disturbing.
Ben Jay Crossman is a film maker and director who spent a few years touring the world with Die Antwoord as part of their crew. Amongst other things, he worked on their ‘I Fink U Freeky‘ and ‘Rich Bitch‘ videos, the latter directed under the moniker Kobus Holnaaier.
Crossman was on tour with Die Antwoord in 2012, when the band accused American DJ Andy Butler from Hercules and Love Affair of sexually assaulting Yo-Landi Visser and attacked him backstage at the event. Crossman got the whole incident on film, and has recently posted it to YouTube.
In the video description, Crossman states: “This is a video where YoLandi Visser lies about getting sexually assaulted by another artist on tour with us in Australia at the Future Music festival 2012. I was a flying monkey at the time and shamefully lied to protect Ninja and YoLandi, this is just one occasions that i filmed. Ninja and YoLandi confessed that evening to myself, DJ Hitek, Diak our sound guy, Matt our american tour manager. At the airport the next morning YoLandi even told out Australian tour manager Tyson whom i witnessed turn a shade of white, saying he was disgusted by the situation. This is just one of many deceptive moments where i was caught up in some Die Antwoord kak. These people are not who they project themselves to be and should be exposed.”
In the video itself, you can clearly hear Ninja say, “Now here’s the story guys, he walked up on this young girl and he felt her bum and her tits and she’s upset,” before he tells Yo-Landi, “Don’t laugh anymore,” as they near more people. Ninja then proceeds to tell people Butler had followed Yo-Landi into the toilets and felt her up, while Yo-Landi appears to ‘cry’ beside him. He then leads the ‘inconsolable’ Visser away, telling someone off camera, “It’s just like Marilyn Monroe, this is the Oscar-award winning scene,” before laughing about the situation.
The whole situation, it appears, was created purely for Die Antwoord’s entertainment. The story is embellished further the more times Ninja repeats it, to tour managers and festival promoters and just about anyone who will listen.
Edit – The video has since been removed from YouTube:
But we have a copy of it here:
(Note: we share this footage, that is freely available on the internet, with the same abandon with which DA shared Zheani’s nudes. Don’t @ us.)
With the number of women around the world now calling out their abusers for sexual violence, and many of them being dismissed as ‘clout chasers’ or worse; seeing footage of a woman flat out lying about being a victim of sexual assault is disgusting. Knowing the allegations made earlier this year and the way Ninja manipulated this situation on camera, purely for entertainment, to the detriment of another artist on the festival schedule, brings everything back to light and brings up many questions. Who are these people? What kind of twisted minds falsify sexual assault claims for fun? How manipulative is Ninja? Why is Yo-Landi so willing to go along with these stupid ideas? How much of what Zheani reported is true, and how can we not believe her now that we know Ninja and Yo-Landi are so happy to lie?
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