Erick Morillo, the dance music star who died early this month, weeks after his arrest for sexual battery, has been accused by numerous other women of similar attacks.
A new investigation by Mixmag has spoken to 10 people who accuse the DJ of sexual and physical assaults, either against them or people they know. Prior to his death, Morillo consistently denied the accusations: he was arrested after turning himself in when a rape kit tested positive for his DNA.
A woman using the pseudonym Taylor, a former colleague of Morillo’s in the early 1990s, said she was raped by him the day after he had allegedly physically assaulted her in a car. “He got up, and like, literally acted as if it was normal, as if nothing had happened,” she said.
Another woman using a different name, Jasmine, said she believed Morillo raped her while she was unconscious in a 2019 incident. She said that after she tried a drug that Morillo offered her, “I just remember waking up and seeing him, and I was naked. And he was naked.”
Her allegations echo the account that led to Morillo being charged in August: that woman said she resisted his sexual advances, became intoxicated and went to a room to sleep, and “reported waking up nude on the bed, with Mr Morillo standing on the side of the bed also nude”, according to the arrest report.
In the Mixmag report, a woman using the pseudonym Katia claimed that Morillo made inappropriate comments to her on numerous occasions, and once “pinned my arms down, he was trying to undress me”. Another woman, Litsa Aris, accused him of attacking her in 1994: “He used his full body weight to pinion me against the desk and had his tongue down my throat and hands all over me.”
As a producer, Morillo had a worldwide hit in 1994 with I Like to Move It under the alias Reel 2 Reel, and had a Top 3 hit in the UK in 2012 in a collaboration with X Factor winner Alexandra Burke. He was also a highly successful house and techno DJ. He was found dead in Florida on 1 September.
