Content warning: This article describes sexual assault. Please take care while reading.
Three men filed three separate lawsuits against Sean “Diddy” Combs Thursday in a New York court, alleging the disgraced hip-hop impresario drugged and raped them between 2019 and 2022.
Details of what the men say happened to them are strikingly similar to other allegations against the music mogul, currently behind bars on a litany of sex abuse charges. According to NBC News, all three men, or “John Does,” are anonymous and seeking unspecified damages. Several of Diddy’s business holdings are named in each suit. All say Diddy used his bodyguards and business associates to lure them into the situation.
Hotel rooms and after-parties
One man said he worked for Diddy as an assistant, but the two men weren’t close when, in 2020, Diddy asked to meet at a New York hotel room to discuss business.
Once inside the room, Diddy offered him a drink. He began to feel drowsy and passed out before waking up a short time later while Diddy raped him. He tried to resist, but according to Diddy’s accuser, the rapper told him, “I’m almost done.”
Another alleged assault happened in 2019, and this man didn’t work for Diddy. He says he met the music superstar at a Manhattan nightclub, and Diddy’s bodyguards invited him back to a hotel for an “exclusive afterparty.”
While there, he says he was offered a drink and passed out, and like the first complainant, woke up amid the assault. In this case, the defendant says he remembers a man and a woman videotaping the attack. He says he was paid $2,500 the next morning.
The third suit filed Thursday says Diddy and his associates assaulted the man several times between 2020 and 2022 under similar circumstances, in one case, at a Bad Boy Records party at Diddy’s mansion in East Hampton, New York.
Diddy denies these and other allegations
Diddy, awaiting trial at the Metropolitan Detention Center in New York, denies these and the other allegations the music producer currently faces. “These complaints are full of lies,” Diddy’s legal team said in a statement of the legal actions filed Thursday. “We will prove them false and seek sanctions against every unethical lawyer who filed fictional claims against him.”
Attorney Tony Buzbee, representing many Diddy accusers, told the BBC that as many as 300 lawsuits could be filed against the embattled music executive from men, women, and individuals who were minors when they say Diddy assaulted them.
Meanwhile, Diddy’s legal woes have now swept up Jay-Z. On Sunday, Jay’s name was added to a civil suit alleging the Roc-A-Fella Records co-founder raped an anonymous 13-year-old girl at an MTV VMA after-party.
Buzbee brought that suit, and Jay has denied the accusations, countersuing Buzbee for defamation. Among other famous people, Cuba Gooding Jr. is also named in Diddy suits, along with Diddy’s son, Christian “King” Combs, and Bad Boy exec Harve Pierre, NewsNation reported.
As the full scope of the Diddy situation has not been realized, the Diddy news comes amid a reckoning with unrelated sexual abuse and sex trafficking allegations in show business, real estate, and even the fashion industry.
In October, former Abercrombie & Fitch CEO Matthew Smith and James Jacobson, Smith’s partner, were charged with 16 counts of sex trafficking and related charges in cases similar to Diddy’s allegations.
Meanwhile, around the same time that the three men filed three new lawsuits, brothers Oren and Tal Alexander, two high-powered real estate brokers, and two of their business associates were arrested on a long list of sex abuse charges.
“With our law enforcement partners,” Damian Williams, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said of the Alexander brothers case, “this office is determined to investigate and prosecute anyone who engages in sex trafficking, no matter how powerful or wealthy or famous you may be.”
If you know someone suffering from sexual violence, contact RAINN or the National Sexual Abuse Telephone Hotline at 1-800-656-4673.
Published: Dec 12, 2024 02:38 pm