Sean “Diddy” Combs was accused of sexual assault, rape and drugging victims in five lawsuits this week, piling on to the dozens of accusations the disgraced entertainment mogul has faced over the past year.
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The lawsuits, which were filed in the Southern District of New York, bring to 34 the total number of sexual assault civil cases against Combs, who also faces a federal criminal trial next year.
The suits cover alleged acts that occurred between 2001 and 2022 in Miami and New York. They were all filed by anonymous plaintiffs: three men and two women, one of whom was 17 when she was allegedly assaulted at one of Combs’s high-profile “White Parties” in the Hamptons. One of the men, a former actor, says that he visited New York City for an audition but was allegedly drugged and gang-raped.
“As his legal team has said before, Mr. Combs has full confidence in the facts and the integrity of the judicial process,” Erica Wolff, an attorney for Combs, said in a statement. “In court, the truth will prevail: that Mr. Combs never sexually assaulted or trafficked anyone – man or woman, adult or minor.”
Combs has generally denied all wrongdoing in the mountain of cases against him. He remains in federal custody at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center, where he’s awaiting trial on a federal sex trafficking and racketeering case. He has pleaded not guilty.
All five accusers allege that they were sexually assaulted after consuming a drink and feeling disoriented. Three of the lawsuits allege that these events happened at parties or events attended by Combs.
A plaintiff from Texas, who filed under “John Doe,” alleges that he was raped by Combs and his security guard after meeting Combs for a music video audition in New York City in October 2001.
According to the lawsuit, the man, who was an actor in the late ’90s and early 2000s, was instructed to visit a room in an unidentified hotel in New York City, where he found about a dozen others, including a man he says was Combs’s bodyguard and a female casting director whom the plaintiff had originally planned to meet.
Combs, per the filing, arrived shortly after and asked the man to take his shirt off. He was then asked whether he was comfortable with nude scenes and to turn around, according to the lawsuit, after which Combs allegedly said, “He’ll do.”
The plaintiff said he declined an alcoholic beverage from the casting director but accepted a Diet Coke, which “tasted strange.” He passed out soon after, the lawsuit says, and, when he woke up, he alleges he saw Combs raping him.
The man left the encounter with numerous injuries, according to the lawsuit, including cracked teeth.
Another woman, a Jane Doe from Texas who was 17 at the time of the alleged assault, says she was invited to Combs’s Fourth of July party in the Hamptons in 2004.
She, too, alleges that she had a drink that made her feel disoriented before waking up in pain to find that she had been sexually assaulted. She says Combs then threatened her, allegedly telling her that he “ran New York and would ruin her,” according to the lawsuit. She said she agreed to not speak with police in exchange for the return of her cellphone and purse, which she had handed over upon arrival at the party, the lawsuit said. She says she was then escorted to a hotel in East Hampton.
Of the remaining plaintiffs, one said her sexual assault took place outside of a New York City club during a Halloween party in 2001. A man was allegedly assaulted at a party hosted by Combs in 2022 in New York. A third plaintiff said he was attacked at an “after-hours event” hosted by Combs at a home in Miami in 2022, where attendees included “recognizable public figures,” per the filings.
Combs has been fighting off sex abuse accusations since November 2023, when Casandra Ventura filed a 35-page lawsuit alleging years of physical and sexual abuse, coercion, and sex trafficking. She and Combs settled that suit for an undisclosed sum hours after it was filed, but dozens of other accusers have since come forward against the musician in civil and criminal courts. Federal agents raided Combs’s properties in March to conduct searches, and they arrested him in September.
These five new lawsuits are a part of about 120 cases that were announced by a group of lawyers in October, including Tony Buzbee, who represents the latest five accusers. Most of them have not yet been filed.
Combs has appealed for bail multiple times, though it hasn’t been granted, and he remains incarcerated in New York.
Attorneys for Combs have requested a gag order to stop witnesses from speaking out against him. The request was denied, but a judge called for all parties involved to keep nonpublic information from leaking ahead of the trial, according to multiple reports. Combs’s attorney also requested that a judge order for prosecutors to publicly identify the accusers in the federal criminal case.
Prosecutors, meanwhile, have been presenting evidence that Combs should not be granted bail while he awaits trial. On Friday, they argued that he had been evading prison surveillance systems by telling people to pay other inmates so he could make calls on their accounts and by instructing people he phones to add unapproved third parties to the call.
The government also accused Combs of attempting to pressure witnesses and manage public opinion from jail, citing notes seized by a prison investigator from his cell during a recent search.
Combs’s team, in turn, complained that prosecutors had improperly obtained privileged communications between Combs and his lawyers, including notes the musician wrote about defense witnesses and strategies. “The targeted seizure of a pretrial detainee’s work product and privileged materials – created in preparation for trial – is outrageous government conduct amounting to a substantive due process violation,” defense lawyers wrote Monday.
Attorneys sparred over the importance of those notes for more than an hour at a hearing the next day. Judge Arun Subramanian ordered that Combs’s leg shackles be removed for the hearing after his lawyers argued that keeping him chained could prejudice a jury.
According to Reuters, the judge decided he would not consider the documents during a bail hearing scheduled for Combs on Friday, and he ordered prosecutors to destroy their copies of the notes pending a decision on their relevance to next year’s trial.
– Herb Scribner, Samantha Chery, The Washington Post