Nicki Minaj’s husband was sentenced Wednesday (July 6) in Los Angeles to probation and home detention for failing to register as a sex offender.
Kenneth Petty, 44, was also ordered to pay a $55,000 fine as part of his sentence, which includes three years’ probation and a year in home detention, CBS News reports, based on filing from the US Attorney’s Office.
Petty last year pleaded guilty for failure to register as a sex offender in the state of California, withdrawing his initial not-guilty plea.
Earlier, in 2019, he was charged following his arrest at a traffic stop in Beverly Hills, when police discovered he had not registered as a sex offender in the state when he moved there from New York three years prior.
As previously reported, Petty registered with the California Megan’s Law database in March 2020, which tracks local sex offenders in California.
Though charges were dropped by the Los Angeles District Attorney’s office, he faced federal charges from the Department of Justice for his failure to immediately register, a requirement under the 2006 Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA).
The New York State department labels Petty as a level-two sex offender, which deems him of having a moderate risk of a repeat offense, after he was convicted of attempted rape in the first degree in 1994, more than two decades before he married Minaj .
Last year, Jennifer Hough, who was the 16-year-old girl Petty tried to rape, filed a lawsuit against Minaj and Petty, accusing the couple of “witness intimidation, intentional infliction of emotional distress, negligent infliction of emotional distress, harassment, assault, battery, sexual assault, and sexual harassment.”
Petty and Minaj moved to California after marrying in 2019, and have a son.
Minaj has stood by her man. Underneath a 2018 Instagram post, she clapped back at those who continued to criticize Petty’s criminal past. “He was 15, she was 16… in a relationship. But go awf Internet,” she wrote.
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And in a 2019 episode of Minaj’s Queen Radio show on Apple Music, she told her fans, “You’ve gotta cover your husband in prayer” before saying that he was wrongfully accused.
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