More lawsuits mount as Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs awaits trial on charges of sex trafficking and racketeering
Not so long ago big names were clamouring for an invitation to Diddy’s parties, but now the disgraced music mogul is locked away in prison awaiting trial. Here’s how it all unravelled.
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As Sean “Diddy” Combs remains locked up in a New York jail awaiting trial on US federal charges of sex trafficking and racketeering, the allegations and lawsuits have continued to mount up against the disgraced music mogul.
In the past week alone, seven new civil lawsuits have been filed in the US against the 54-year-old, including two from accusers who say they were underage at the time they were allegedly drugged and assaulted by Combs.
They are the latest in a year-long wave of allegations and litigations brought against Combs who denies any wrongdoing, whether in relation to the criminal or civil allegations.
In one of the new lawsuits, filed by “Jane Doe”, the unnamed woman alleges that she was 13 in 2000, when she was invited by a limousine driver to attend an MTV Video Music Awards after-party thrown by Combs in New York. After being given a drink, Doe’s complaint stated that she “felt drowsy”, and that she looked for a place to lay down. Combs, joined by an unnamed male celebrity and an unnamed female celebrity, came into the bedroom where she was lying down.
“You are ready to party!” Combs told Doe, according to her lawsuit.
The lawsuit states an unnamed male celebrity proceeded to rape Doe, while Combs and an unnamed female celebrity watched. Combs then raped Doe as the other two celebrities watched, according to her lawsuit.
It is the first lawsuit against Combs to mention another celebrity.
In another lawsuit, a man has alleged a professional athlete stopped Combs from continuing to sexually assault him during a party.
The unidentified man alleged he was invited to a party for Combs’ Ciroc vodka. (Ciroc no longer has a business relationship with Combs.)
At the party, which had celebrity guests, the man said Combs told him to meet him in a private office, according to the lawsuit.
The man alleged that once he was in the office with Combs he thought that the Bad Boy Records founder appeared under the influence of drugs or alcohol. Combs allegedly approached the man and exposed his genitals, the suit claims.
Combs then allegedly grabbed the plaintiff’s genitals through his pants and squeezed them in a “rough and sexual manner,” the complaint alleges.
The unnamed man claimed that the “situation escalated” until an unidentified professional athlete entered the room and stopped him.
Combs’ lawyers have dismissed the barrage of lawsuits as “clear attempts to garner publicity”, stressing that “Mr Combs has never sexually assaulted anyone – adult or minor, man or woman”.
The star’s fall from grace has been swift but it has left many wondering how he got away with this alleged behaviour for so long.
US authorities said it was unchecked power and influence that protected him from accountability for years of alleged illegal activity.
“We’ve seen this pattern before — someone in a position of power and influence chooses to exploit others for their own gain, using fear, manipulation and violence to maintain control over his victims,” Fatima Goss Graves, president and CEO of the US National Women’s Law Centre, said in a statement, after Combs’ arrest.
For decades, he embodied the American dream; a kid who grew up in poverty in New York’s Harlem neighbourhood (Combs’ father was shot dead when he was just three), he would go on to become one of the entertainment industry’s most influential figures; a wildly successful businessman with more than half a billion dollars in the bank and an empire which spanned music, film, television, and fashion. (At one point, he even owned a 50 per cent stake in vodka and tequila brands – Ciroc and DeLeon Tequila – for which he reportedly pocketed $90 million annually.)
Publicly, at least, he was a shining example of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, the rapper-turned-businessman who rose up out of challenging beginnings to create a multimillion-dollar business with the likes of Jennifer Lopez on his arm (although a murky incident involving a disagreement and a gun going off in a Times Square nightclub in 1999 while Combs was partying with Lopez was surely a sign of things to come).
Not surprisingly, Combs earned a reputation as an enthusiastic party boy and his lavish “White Parties” became legendary in Hollywood circles after the entrepreneur discovered that he could use his parties to keep himself at the centre of the entertainment industry.
“He was just figuring out that how he could get the most attention was to become the party king of New York,” Rob Shuter, who worked as a publicist for Combs at the height of his fame, told the BBC.
Big names clamoured for an invitation. Every year stars such as Leonardo DiCaprio, Ashton Kutcher, Jay Z, Justin Bieber and various Kardashians all flocked to Combs’ annual A-list events which could occasionally run for days at either one of his luxurious Hamptons or Miami mansions.
But underneath all the glitz and the glamour, a seedy underside has since been painted by US prosecutors, who have alleged Combs traded in violence, sex trafficking and severe abuses of power throughout the years; that he “wielded” his “power and prestige” to allegedly engage in sexual, emotional and physical abuse against the people around him.
Indeed, a A$45 million-dollar lawsuit brought against Combs last November by his ex-girlfriend and former pop protégé Cassandra “Cassie” Ventura claimed Combs sexually assaulted her in 2018 and subjected her to a years-long abusive relationship that included physical abuse and his assertion of “complete control” over her personal and professional life. (A shocking 2016 video made public showed an enraged towel-clad Combs beating, chasing, kicking and throwing a glass vase at Ventura as she tried to escape him and into a hotel elevator.)
The lawsuit brought by Ventura against Combs ultimately began his unravelling. He was arrested last month and charged with sex trafficking, racketeering and transportation to engage in prostitution. It came after months of lawsuits and several allegations of sexual assault, gender violence, misconduct and other “serious illegal activity” that took place over several years.
And those once-vaunted White Parties are now at the centre of some of the most serious allegations surrounding Combs. There are the alleged “freak offs” which involved drug-fuelled orgies, where the mogul allegedly coerced and forced both male and female sex workers to engage in days long sex sessions. Investigators alleged that Combs would ply victims with drugs and sometimes resort to violence and intimidation during the sex sessions.
Now, the man who was once first on the guest list for the Oscars, the Met Gala and the Grammys sits in a tiny jail cell in Brooklyn far from the bright lights of Manhattan and the social circles he used to rule.
DIDDY’S DIRT FILE: 20-PLUS LAWSUITS FILED
Since Sean “Diddy” Combs’ ex-girlfriend Cassandra “Cassie” Ventura filed a $45 million-dollar lawsuit against the music mogul last November, more than 20 new lawsuits against the former rapper have been filed. Here, we take a look at some of the allegations against Combs.
CASSANDRA ‘CASSIE’ VENTURA
FILED NOVEMBER 2023
The R&B singer Cassie accused ex-boyfriend Combs of rape, forcing her to participate in sex parties he called “freak-offs” and of ongoing physical abuse and coercive control that lasted a decade. Combs settled the lawsuit for an undisclosed amount the following day.
LIZA GARDNER
FILED NOVEMBER 2023
Liza Gardner claims she was just 16 when she met Combs at an album release party in New York and that she was then transported to a home in New Jersey where she was “physically forced into having sex with Combs against her will”. Combs’ lawyer responded saying the lawsuit was a “money grab” and his client was an “easy target”.
ANONYMOUS WOMAN
FILED DECEMBER 2023
A woman accused Combs and two other men of gang-raping her in a New York recording studio 20 years ago, when she was 17 years old. She alleges three men gave her copious amounts of drugs and alcohol, and took turns raping her in the studio’s bathroom as she drifted in and out of consciousness. Combs’ response was “enough is enough”. “I did not do any of the awful things being alleged. I will fight for my name, my family and for the truth.”
RODNEY ‘LIL ROD’ JONES
FILED FEBRUARY 2024
Music producer Lil Rod accused Combs of making unwanted sexual contact and of forcing him to hire prostitutes and participate in sex acts with them and to induce him into doing that offered him money and also threatened him with violence.
Jones said that while working on an album with Combs, the mogul grabbed his genitals without consent, and that he also tried to “groom” Jones into having sex with another man, telling him it was “a normal practice in the music industry.”
APRIL LAMPROS
FILED APRIL 2024
A woman who met Combs in the mid-1990s accused him of an “aggressive, coercive and abusive relationship based on sex.”
Lampros accused Combs of four “terrifying sexual encounters,” including two instances of alleged rape and forced oral sex in a car park in the 1990s.
DAWN RICHARD
FILED SEPTEMBER 2024
Dawn Richard, a singer who came to prominence on Combs’s MTV reality show “Making the Band,” accused him of threatening her, groping her and flying into “frenzied, unpredictable rages” while he oversaw her career.
THALIA GRAVES
FILED SEPTEMBER 2024
A woman accused Combs of drugging and raping her at his recording studio in Manhattan in 2001, saying that she learned in 2023 that the assault had been recorded and shown to others.
“JANE DOE”
FILED SEPTEMBER 2024
Combs was accused of drugging and raping a woman on multiple occasions, with the woman, identified as Jane Doe in the lawsuit, further alleging she became pregnant after one of the encounters; she is seeking undisclosed damages.
ANONYMOUS PLAINTIFFS
FILED OCTOBER 2024
Texas lawyer Tony Buzbee, who filed 11 new lawsuits in New York last weekend, said he would file more lawsuits on behalf of more than 100 sexual abuse victims of Combs. Some of the allegations in the latest lawsuits include a man who alleges that Combs exposed his genitals, then grabbed the man’s genitals in a “rough and sexual manner” before an unnamed professional athlete entered the room and stopped Combs. Another woman alleged that Combs raped her in 2000 when she was 13 and that he was joined by an unnamed male celebrity who sexually assaulted her while Combs and an unnamed female celebrity watched.
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Originally published as More lawsuits mount as Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs awaits trial on charges of sex trafficking and racketeering
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