Yung Filly, a British YouTuber turned rapper, has been charged with raping a woman in September after he performed at a nightclub in a Western Australia suburb.
The Government of Western Australia announced Thursday in a news release that a man had been taken into custody in Brisbane earlier this week and was extradited to Perth for a court hearing on sexual assault charges. The charges include four counts of rape, three counts of “assault occasioning bodily harm” and one count of impeding a person’s “normal breathing or circulation by applying pressure on, or to, their neck,” according to the statement.
A representative for the 29-year-old rapper, real name Andrés Felipe Valencia Barrientos, did not immediately respond to The Times’ request for comment. The Western Australia Police Force did not immediately respond to The Times’ request for additional information.
Yung Filly allegedly raped a woman in her 20s in his hotel room in Perth on Sept. 28 after he performed a show in Hillarys, the statement said. The “Grey” and “Tempted” musician performed at Hillary’s Bar1 Nightclub on Sept. 27, according to several posts on the club’s Instagram page. He stopped at Bar1 as part of his Australian tour, which also included shows in Melbourne, Sydney and Gold Coast.
Perth barrister Seamus Rafferty SC represented Yung Filly in Perth Magistrates Court and applied for bail on the rapper’s behalf, the BBC reported.
Yung Filly was born in Colombia but is based in southeast London. He started creating online content as a teenager but gained popularity for his “Asking Awkward Questions” YouTube series. Despite his YouTube fame, the social media personality told Hunger Magazine in 2022 that his passion was always music.
“I think you just hear the music and you can just tell I am so in love with it and I understand it to such a high degree that you can’t compare me to no one else,” he said.
Yung Filly boasts more than 1.8 million subscribers on YouTube and 3.2 million followers on Instagram. He has hosted BBC Three’s “Hot Property” series, among other projects, and appeared on Channel 4’s “Great Celebrity Bake Off” Stand Up to Cancer fundraiser special in 2022.
Yung Filly and social media star Chunkz won the media personality prize at the 2021 Mobo Awards.
