Javaughn Young-White says he regrets his word choice in a filing he made in his custody lawsuit against Kehlani, claiming on Friday that his former attorney had submitted the complaint “without my approval.”
The complaint included claims that Kehlani was in a cult. Young White’s statement comes days after he and Kehlani slammed TMZ for their coverage of the custody fight over their daughter Adeya.
“These documents contained general recollections from my initial consultation with my aforementioned rep,” he wrote on Friday. “They were filed with choice language I didn’t okay. I regret they were included.”
The initial filing described Kehlani’s ties to santería, an Afro-Caribbean religion based on Yoruba and Catholic beliefs, as being part of a cult. (TMZ called it a sex cult.) The initial filing also claimed a former priest of a religious group, who had been accused of sexual abuse, had been in the care of his daughter.
In Friday’s statement, Young-White said the information about the priest had been circulated by “parties attempting to use allegations and vocabulary to escalate their own disputes within the church,” and that his daughter “was no longer affiliated” with the church when the allegations occurred.
“I was still deeply distressed about the direct care of my child. From my perspective, I was being told the consequences of alarming decision-making that could have ended quite differently,” he wrote.
A rep for Kehlani did not immediately respond to Rolling Stone‘s request for comment on Young-White’s new statement.
The initial filing alleged that Kehlani had had a “home birth orchestrated” by a cult, and blamed the at-home birth for being the reason why Young-White isn’t listed on her birth certificate. The filing also claimed that the cult controlled Kehlani’s “actions and her behaviors, including when it comes to the upbringing of our daughter.”
“As a father, I could never have anticipated that such serious allegations would be so careless. I still believe my alarm was proportionate to the information I received from trusted parties,” he wrote Friday. “However, I deeply regret and apologize for any role I played in perpetuating these claims.”
Kehlani broke her silence this week, saying she’s “always taken great care to ensure that my child remains protected and safe,” and “strongly” denied that she had left Adeya “alone with anyone deemed dangerous or unsafe.”
“My child and my commitment to motherhood have always been my sole driving forces in this life and will always remain so,” she said at the time. Kehlani ended her statement by saying she would be “taking space” for her and Adeya’s well-being and would handle the matter privately.