YouTuber Jake Paul Accused of Sexual Assault by TikTok Star Justine Paradise



TikTok star Justine Paradise is coming forward with sexual assault allegations against YouTuber Jake Paul.

In a 20-minute-long YouTube video released on Friday, the 24-year-old content creator accused Paul, also 24, of forcing her to perform oral sex on him at his Team 10 house in California — where he and several friends live and work together — in July 2019.

Paul's attorney, Daniel E. Gardenswartz, said in a statement provided to PEOPLE on Tuesday, "Our client is aware of the recent allegation against him. While others have already begun to debunk the claim alleged against him, our client categorically denies the allegation and has every intention of aggressively disproving it and pursuing legal action against those responsible for the defamation of his character. Our client believes that any false allegations diminish the credibility of those who have truly been victims of misconduct."

According to Paradise, she had signed a non-disclosure agreement prior to entering Paul's house and, until recently, believed she "wasn't allowed to talk" about the alleged incident because "if you sign an NDA, you're signing away your rights to talk about anything basically."

Paradise, who has over 524,000 TikTok followers, said she was first introduced to Paul in June 2019 after a mutual friend invited her over to his house. After exchanging numbers, the two began texting and hanging out together over the course of the next several weeks, according to the social media influencer.

"One of those days, I was in the studio — some people were recording down there — and Jake pulled me into this little corner area in the studio and started kissing me," Paradise recalled. "I was fine with that. I did think he was cute."

Paul allegedly then took her by the hand and led her to his bedroom, where they started dancing and kissing until "he took it to his bed," according to Paradise. Paradise said when he put his hands in places on her she did not want, she moved them away, leading to Paul to ask, "If nothing's going to happen, what's the point?"

"Sex is very special and very important to me," she explained. "Normally, everybody respects me when I don't want to do sexual things, so I thought that it was fine if I went in his room. I thought it would be fine to kiss him, because I thought he would stop if I didn't want to do anything else."

However, according to Paradise, things continued to escalate despite her telling Paul "no" and the YouTube star, while physically on top of her, allegedly forced her to perform oral sex.

"He didn't ask for consent or anything," she alleged. "That's not okay. On no level at all is that okay."

Paradise said Paul then acted cold towards her and did not speak to her again.

In the days after the alleged assault, Paradise said she tried to reach out to Paul "to talk to him and tell him, 'Hey, I didn't consent for this. It made me feel so awful,'" though she "couldn't tell him because he never responded" to her text messages.

"I never got an apology or anything like that," she added. "I would have liked to have an apology because that was messed up, and I didn't want that."

Paradise ended her video by saying she hopes that by sharing her story publicly, Paul "realizes what he did and doesn't do it again."

"I know he knows that I didn't want to do anything sexual with him," she said. "I've thought about this literally every single day since it happened. But the more and more I think about it, the more I realize, no one can be doing that and think that it's something right to do."

In a TikTok video shared on Friday, Paradise explained, "I've kept this to myself for a long time, so making this decision to share it publicly is terrifying because I know I'm gonna have a lot of attention on it — and I know that a lot of that attention is gonna be hate."

She added, "But also, I know it is necessary to share this information with everybody, so it could maybe like, it could save someone that could be in my position in the future."

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