Rhye’s Michael Milosh Accused Of Grooming And Physical And Sexual Abuse By Ex-Wife
Emma Marie Jenkinson
Michael Milosh, the man behind the whispery R&B-pop act Rhye, has been accused of grooming and of physical and sexual abuse. In a lengthy series of statements posted on Instagram in the last two days, Milosh’s ex-wife, the actress Alexa Nikolas, has accused him of abusing her and other women.
Nikolas posted her story in an “open letter” that she gave the title “Groomed By The Groom.” In a 2018 interview with the online magazine Verse, Nikolas told a story about first contacting Milosh when she was 16. At the time, according to Nikolas, she sent him a MySpace message telling him that she liked his music. She says he immediately responded and asked for her phone number. In Nikolas’ story, they met two years later, after she turned 18.
On Instagram, Nikolas writes that Milosh and his representatives tried to “take down” the Verse interview after its publication: “I couldn’t believe it. I said nothing damaging and even withheld many truths out of fear of him not helping me financially during our separation.” On Instagram, Nikolas writes more about that initial contact, and she continues, “Later on, after I had just turned 17, he responded with an invitation to fly to New York so that he could take photographs and meet me in person.” She also writes that she remained in contact with him before turning 18: “A lot of our conversations were via skype video chat. They were all sexual and flirtatious. I can account account on numerous occasions undressing up on his request.”
Nikolas writes that she had her “first sexual experience” with Milosh in Berlin, when he was 35 and she’d just turned 18. She writes that Milosh pressured her into sex: “I did not respect my no and neither did he.” She also writes that she “felt unsafe,” and her Instagram account includes screenshots in which she tells a friend that she wanted to go home. Later on, she says, he also pressured her into anal sex, and she claims that Rhye’s 2013 song “Major Minor Love” is “about grooming a young girl and gaslighting.”
Nikolas writes that she later paid for Milosh to fly to Los Angeles and that she paid for everything when he was staying there. She also claims that Milosh would use sounds of sex in Rhye’s music: “In one of his songs ‘Don’t call it’ he used the sound of me saying ‘No’ and reversed it to saying ‘On.'” She also claims that Milosh used the sound of him having sex with two Japanese women on the song “Instrumental”: “I doubt he got consent because they did not speak English and they were intoxicated.”
Nikolas claims that Milosh proposed when she was 19 and they’d been dating for six months. She says that he suspects he married her for a green card. She also claims that Milosh told her that he had sexually assaulted a Jamaican woman when he was in his twenties. When she told him to contact the woman and apologize, Nikolas writes, “He charged at me, picked me up, pushed me on the couch, and pressed his forearm into my throat and continually screamed ‘shut the fuck up, shut the fuck up, shut the fuck up!’. I couldn’t breathe.”
Nikolas also claims that Milosh and his girlfriend subjected her to “a 48 hour bullying session” after the Verse interview came out. She writes, “To this day I still suffer PTSD from that relationship, even doubting my own sanity on some days.” Nikolas’ full Instagram “open letter” is below.
UPDATE: In a statement to Pitchfork, Milosh called Nikolas’ allegations “outrageously false” and her open letter “a piece of revisionist fiction.” He said her “stories [are] provably untrue,” adding that he is “fully prepared to cooperate with any independent investigation into” Nikolas’ claims.
If you or someone you know is suffering from sexual violence, please contact RAINN or call the National Sexual Abuse Telephone Hotline at 1-800-656-4673.
