For years, music producer Drew Dixon and rapper Sheri Sher kept quiet about Russell Simmons, fearing that naming him as their alleged assaulter would be a betrayal of the hip-hop community and forever label them as “victims.”

“To come out against Russell, who came and brought hip-hop to the major league, me as a Black young woman from the Bronx coming, I used to think, ‘What power would I have? Who’s going to believe me?'” Sher said at TheWrap’s Power Women Summit. “As a Black young woman growing up, you learn to nurture and stand for your hood, especially Black men, men of color in there, and how dare you come out and try to put him down when he’s already being put down by society and police? How dare you? So you had a silence and a code that you had to keep.”

Sher was...