Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs and son named in sexual assault lawsuit
A woman alleged she was drugged and groped while working on board a yacht rented by the rapper
Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs and his youngest son Christian Combs have been named as defendants in a new sexual assault lawsuit.
The legal action filed on Thursday in the Los Angeles County Superior Court accuses the hip hop mogul’s youngest son, 26, of drugging and sexually assaulting a woman on board a yacht chartered by the Combs family in 2022.
The lawsuit comes after the elder Combs was accused in multiple lawsuits of sexual assault, sex trafficking, and other criminal wrongdoing. He has strongly denied all of the allegations.
The complainant in the latest case, Grace O’Marcaigh, alleged that the assault occurred while she was working as a stewardess on a luxury yacht on the evening of December 28, 2022, according to NBC News.
O’Marcaigh said she witnessed celebrities and “suspected sex workers” openly taking drugs while working a 6pm to 6am shift serving drinks and food.
The suit alleges that, at some point during the evening, a “heavily intoxicated” Christian “King” Combs came aboard where he planned to record rap music with Rodney Jones, a record producer, in the yacht’s makeshift studio.
He allegedly began pressuring O’Marcaigh to take shots of tequila in the studio, and after she had one drink he aggressively insisted that she take more, according to NBC News. O’Marcaigh says that she suspected the tequila had been drugged. She alleges that Christian began to grope her.
The lawsuit cites audio recordings in which O’Marcaigh can be heard refusing alcohol and spurning Christian’s advances. The recordings were made by Jones, who has filed his own dollars 30 million lawsuit against Sean in a Manhattan court alleging he was groped, threatened and witnessed sex trafficking.
After O’Marcaigh left the studio, she alleges that Christian pursued her and asked her to find him a place to sleep. The lawsuit says that O’Marcaigh took him to the yacht’s cinema where he allegedly blocked her from leaving, groped her and took off his clothes. She also alleges that when she complained to the yacht’s captain, he declined to take her complaint seriously and retaliated by terminating her job in May 2023.
O’Marcaigh says her mental health suffered as a result, and she experienced anxiety, panic attacks and developed an eating disorder. She is suing Christian for sexual assault, sexual harassment and infliction of emotional distress. She alleges Sean aided and abetted his son by chartering the boat, and is suing him for premises liability.
O’Marcaigh is seeking unspecified damages. Tyrone Blackburn, her attorney, told NBC in a statement: “It gives us no joy or pleasure in filing this suit against Christian Combs who has clearly adopted his father’s pattern and practice of depravity.”
Aaron Dyer, an attorney for both Combs men, told The Times that he had not seen the lawsuit. “We have not seen this woman’s claim but I’m sure we can expect the same kind of manufactured lies we’ve come to expect from Tyrone Blackburn and his clients, just as we saw in Rodney Jones’ lawsuit – which has yet to be served.”
Dyer said that Blackburn had a pattern of filing lawsuits with salacious allegations to garner media attention. “This is just another page from that same playbook, as we learned of this lawsuit the same way anyone hears about Mr. Blackburn’s filings: through the media,” he said.
Last month, Homeland Security agents swarmed Combs’s residences in Los Angeles and Miami as part of a sex trafficking investigation in New York. Dyer said at the time the raids were “excessive” and “a gross use of military-level force”.
