Nicki Minaj’s Husband Sentenced to 1-Year House Arrest for Failing to Register as a Sex Offender

Nicki Minaj’s husband will have to get comfortable being indoors after he was sentenced to one year of home confinement for failing to register as a sex offender.

On Wednesday, Kenneth Petty was sentenced to one-year house arrest, three years of probation, and fined $55,000 for failing to register as a sex offender stemming from his 1995 attempted rape conviction, NBC News reports.

Petty was required to register when he moved from New York to California in July 2019 to be with his superstar wife. But with his nearly three-decade-old charges looming over his head, Nicki’s husband doesn’t have the pleasure of just moving around at his leisure.

Since the age of 16, Petty has had to keep himself registered as a sex offender, as required by the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA). Last September, he pleaded guilty to one count of failure to register as a sex offender.

Petty is a registered Level 2 sex offender on New York State’s Sex Offender Registry, USA Today reports. SORNA requires every sex offender “to update their registration in each jurisdiction they reside, are employed, or attend school.” Failure to register is considered a federal crime.

It was after Petty was pulled over for a traffic stop in California that authorities learned he hadn’t registered as a sex offender. He was indicted on the charges in March 2020.

His sex offender charges stem from an April 1995 conviction of first-degree rape in connection with a 1994 assault that occurred when both he and the victim were 16.

The victim, Jennifer Hough, appeared on The Real in September 2021 to speak out against Minaj and Petty’s alleged harassment. She also recalled the 1994 assault and how she had to relive the experience again after Minaj spoke about the case on social media.

“I feel like the actions that were taken in regards to this whole situation put me in a different type of fear at my age, and it was wrong,” Hough said at the time. “The only way not to be afraid is to continue to speak up.”