The British rapper, YouTuber and television personality Yung Filly has been arrested in Australia and charged with rape and assault.
The 29-year-old, born Andrés Felipe Valencia Barrientos, who was on tour in the country, was arrested in Brisbane and taken to Perth where the alleged incidents occurred.
He is accused of assaulting a woman in a hotel room after a nightclub performance on 27 September. He faces four counts of sexual penetration without consent and three counts of assault, plus another count of “impeding a person’s normal breathing or circulation by applying pressure to their neck”.
At a magistrate court hearing, prosecutors presented images of the woman’s injuries. Barrientos appeared but spoke only to confirm his name and acknowledge the charges against him.
Police argued he was a flight risk and could tamper with witnesses, but he was granted bail on the condition he stay in Western Australia, not post about the case on social media, and not contact the alleged victim.
According to ABC Australia, during the hearing Barrientos’s lawyer questioned the strength of the prosecution’s case against him.
Barrientos was born in Columbia and moved to south London as a young child. His broadcasting career began on YouTube, where his comedy skits earned the attention of commissioning editors at the BBC, which hired him to present the dating show Hot Property in 2019.
The following year he presented BBC reality gameshow Don’t Scream, then found a huge audience with the advent of TikTok, earning 3.2m followers on the platform, adding to his 1.8m subscribers on YouTube. He is also known for a popular podcast with fellow YouTuber Chunkz, The Chunkz and Filly Show.
Alongside his multi-platform video content, he has had a music career as a rapper and singer, beginning in 2017. In 2020 his collaborative single with Chunkz, Hold, reached the UK Top 30, and earlier this year his track Grey spent nine weeks on the chart and earned 63m streams on Spotify, where he has more than 2m monthly listeners.