Sean “Diddy” Combs performs at the 2022 BET Awards at Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles, California, USA on June 26, 2022. Portal/David Swanson/ File Photo acquire license rights
Dec 6 (Portal) – Hip-hop star Sean “Diddy” Combs was accused in federal court on Wednesday of his role in the 2003 gang rape of a 17-year-old girl at his Manhattan recording studio in recent weeks allegations of sexual assault were made against him.
Combs, 54, founder of the groundbreaking label Bad Boy Records and a hugely successful rap artist, issued a statement Wednesday categorically proclaiming his innocence and saying his accusers were “looking for a quick payday.”
The plaintiff in the latest lawsuit was identified as Jane Doe, described as a high school student when she met Combs employees at a Detroit-area lounge 20 years ago.
The complaint says she was flown on a private jet from Michigan to the New York area and then driven to the New York studio, where Combs and two other men plied her with drugs and alcohol.
According to the lawsuit, the plaintiff was then raped one by one in a studio bathroom by Combs and the other two men while she repeatedly lost consciousness. It said Combs also witnessed one of the other attacks after he was finished.
She was later flown back to Michigan but had little memory of her journey back to the Detroit suburbs, the lawsuit says.
As evidence to support her allegations, the lawsuit includes several photos in which the accuser is allegedly posing – her face intentionally blurred – in Combs’ studio, including one in which she appears to be sitting on Combs’ lap, both facing the camera.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, said the plaintiff has since “suffered extreme emotional distress that has impacted nearly every aspect of her life and personal relationships.”
The lawsuit was filed under New York’s Gender-Based Violence Victims Protection Act, which has been expanded to allow accusers to sue over alleged long-standing crimes even after the statute of limitations has expired.
Combs’ latest accuser said she decided to come forward after reading news reports about the lawsuit filed against Combs last month by his ex-girlfriend Cassie Ventura, who goes by the stage name Cassie, accusing him of cheating on her having been subjected to physical abuse, sex trafficking, etc. rape over the course of a decade.
Ventura and Combs, who used to go by nicknames like “P. Diddy,” “Puff Daddy,” and “Puff Daddy” announced the next day that they had settled the case under confidential terms.
Combs’ attorney, Ben Brafman, said at the time that the settlement was “in no way an admission of wrongdoing” and that his client maintained his “categorical denial” of Ventura’s claims.
But Combs was hit with two more lawsuits within days – one from a plaintiff named Joi Dickerson-Neal, who accused the rap mogul of drugging and sexually abusing her while she was a student at Syracuse University in 1991. Another “Jane Doe.” The complaint accused him of forcing her and a friend to have non-consensual sex in the early 1990s.
He has denied these allegations.
“For the past few weeks I have sat in silence and watched as people tried to assassinate my character,” he wrote in his social media post on Wednesday. “Let me be clear: I did none of the terrible things that are alleged.”
One of the other two men accused of raping the plaintiff in Wednesday’s lawsuit was named in the lawsuit as Harve Pierre, a former top executive at Bad Boy. The third man was identified in the complaint only as a “third attacker.”
Pierre himself was accused in a separate lawsuit last month of using his position of authority at Bad Boy to bully and sexually assault a former assistant.
Neither Pierre nor any representatives could be reached for comment. A spokesperson for Bad Boy told People magazine last month that the record label was “investigating the allegations.”
Reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles
Our standards: The Thomson Portal Trust Principles.
Acquire license rights, opens new tab