Kenneth Petty, Nicki Minaj’s husband, sentenced for failing to register as sex offender

Petty will serve one year of at-home detention and will be on probation for three years. He also was fined $55,000.

Kenneth Petty has been sentenced to three years of probation and one year of house arrest for failing to register as a sex offender in California.

A judge handed down the sentence during a hearing Wednesday in Los Angeles, according to People. In addition, Petty, the husband of Nicki Minaj, must wear an ankle bracelet during his in-home detention period and pay a fine of $55,000. He pleaded guilty to failing to register as a sex offender in 2019, when the couple moved from New York to California.

It was in November 2019 that Beverly Hills police discovered he had not registered as a sex offender in California, according to TMZ. He was arrested, posted a $20,000 bond and was charged with failure to register.

Apparently, he had still not registered by March 2020, when he was arrested again. In this case, Petty initially pleaded not guilty and faced a possible maximum sentence of 10 years in prison and lifetime supervised release. He changed his plea to guilty in September 2021.

In 1995, Petty was convicted of the attempted rape of a 16-year-old girl, Jennifer Hough, and served four years in prison. Upon his release, he was required to register as a level two sex offender in New York. Shortly after he and Minaj married in October 2019, they moved to California.

Hough filed a lawsuit against Petty and Minaj last August, accusing them of trying to intimidate her into recanting the attempted-rape allegations. Hough also claimed in the lawsuit that the couple offered her $500,000 to recant her accusations against Petty. In January, she dropped the lawsuit against Minaj.

“The case against Nicki was voluntarily dismissed,” said Hough’s lawyer, Tyrone Blackburn. “The case against Kenneth Petty is still ongoing.  Stay tuned!”

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