In a statement, Simmons, 60, strongly disputed her account. “Everything that occurred between Keri and me occurred with her full consent and participation,” he said. Much of the two days and one night he spent with her, he said, was with other people, or in public. Ratner had “no recollection” of Khalighi asking him for help and denied witnessing her “protest,” his attorney Martin Singer said.
Ratner has also disputed the accounts of four other women who accused him of sexual misconduct in this story and a previous report by The Times that included the claims of six others, among them actresses Olivia Munn and Natasha Henstridge.
Since that Nov. 1 report, which detailed allegations of harassment, groping and forced oral sex, additional women contacted The Times about Ratner, who has directed, produced or financed successful films including “Rush Hour,” “The Revenant” and “Horrible Bosses.”
In several of the accounts, the women said that Ratner, 48, surrounded himself with powerful friends, including Simmons and filmmaker James Toback, who, while sharing Ratner’s playboy lifestyle, have also been accused of engaging in sexual misconduct. Those friendships, some women said, enabled inappropriate behavior within the group, sometimes by active participation and in other cases by simply providing venues for incidents to take place.
These men and other older, controversial Hollywood friends — including producer Robert Evans and filmmaker Roman Polanski — have served as father figures to Ratner, who had a distant relationship with his late dad. Evans, the former Paramount Pictures production chief who was convicted of trafficking cocaine, explained his relationship with Ratner in a 2007 Vanity Fair story: “I was his Hollywood father. I don't know whether I should be proud of that or not."
Simmons, who co-founded Def Jam, has often described how Ratner first curried favor by furnishing him with models after they met in 1987. Then an undergraduate studying film at New York University, Ratner seemed to know where the models lived in Manhattan, Simmons has said.
“He was willing to do anything to be of use,” Simmons wrote in his book “Do You!: 12 Laws to Access the Power in You to Achieve Happiness and Success,” published in 2007. “After he hung around a bit and figured out that I liked models, then he made it his business to take me to every model’s apartment he could find.”
Ratner, who has said his father abused drugs and became homeless, found in Simmons a willing surrogate. "He's my son, all right," Simmons told Vanity Fair.
Ratner’s introduction to a 2005 book about the rise of Def Jam acknowledged that their relationship was “initially based on our mutual admiration for beautiful women.”
The men would go clubbing in Simmons’ Cadillac limo, partying all night and into the next day. At the time, Simmons was a power player in New York who helped turn hip-hop into a mainstream business and cultural force with the release of records by Public Enemy, the Beastie Boys and LL Cool J. Simmons also has founded clothing labels including Phat Farm — once a staple of the hip-hop scene — and created HBO’s “Def Comedy Jam,” which has launched the careers of many black stand-ups.
Admiration — and success — were not the only things Ratner and Simmons allegedly shared. In a 2005 Playboy article about Simmons’ reformed ways, magazine writer Touré described a 1994 incident in which he met Simmons for an interview at a cafe below the music mogul’s apartment. When Ratner showed up a little while later, Simmons disappeared for half an hour without explanation. Touré wrote that he later learned that Simmons "had gone up to his place and had sex with a sumptuous model whom Ratner had just finished with."
In 2004, producer Shelly Clippard, then 29, flew to Prague, Czech Republic, with Ratner and others to tour a production facility that was offering promising tax incentives. She said Ratner traded seats to sit next to her for the transatlantic flight, and began making sexually explicit comments to her, showing her nude photographs of his famous then-girlfriend and graphically describing her body.
Clippard said she was so disturbed by the encounter that upon returning from Europe she shared details of the incident with a friend, who confirmed that conversation with The Times. (Two other women who talked to The Times described being shown nude photos of the same woman by Ratner.)
Singer said Ratner “has no recollection” of the alleged run-in with Clippard and “absolutely denies” showing her photos of his former girlfriend. “No such photos exist,” Singer said.
Now 43, Khalighi said her memories of her encounter with Ratner and Simmons remain vivid — even as she has worked hard to move past the incident.
A year ago, she said, she saw Simmons at the Soho House in West Hollywood, where he approached her, “poured his heart out in a really touching, remorseful apology” for his behavior and offered his telephone number — saying she should call him if she wanted to talk further.
“He knew what he had done; I knew what he had done,” she said. “That's also why it was so vindicating, because it was there, acknowledged.”
That apology, Simmons’ attorney Brad D. Rose said, was in the “context for the embarrassment and upheaval the weekend caused her” related to her “infidelity.” (Khalighi disputes the account.)
