Sean “Diddy” Combs and the former president of his company, Bad Boy Entertainment, were accused of gang raping a 17-year-old high school junior in a new lawsuit filed Wednesday.
This is the fourth accuser to come forward with allegations of sexual assault against Combs, just weeks after he settled a bombshell lawsuit from his ex-girlfriend Casandra “Cassie” Ventura, who alleged years of horrific abuse.
The latest lawsuit says the assault occurred in 2003, with the victim claiming she was “sex trafficked” and “gang raped” by Combs, the music executive Harve Pierre, and another unnamed assailant.
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Combs’ accuser is identified only as “Ms. Doe” in the lawsuit, but blurred photos were included in the filing that show her sitting on the lap of Combs, who was 34 at the time, on the night of the alleged assault.
The accuser said the incident caused her “significant emotional distress and feels of shame that have plagued her life and personal relationships for 20 years.”
In a statement to The Daily Beast, the accuser’s attorneys claimed the assault occurred after Doe was approached by Pierre at a club in Michigan. The lawsuit said Pierre told Doe that she was “hot” and that Combs—whom he described as his “best friend” and “brother”—would love to meet her.
The woman says she spoke to Combs on the phone, and he insisted she fly to New York City to meet with him that night. During that plane ride east, the woman said Pierre, who she claims had been smoking crack cocaine in the club’s bathroom, forced her to perform oral sex on him.
Once in New York, the woman alleged she was taken to Combs’ studio, where she says the three men hit on her, “stroking her body, asking to see her ‘ass’ and telling her how ‘hot’ and ‘sexy’ she was.” She claimed the trio gave her alcohol, drugs, and eventually gang raped her in the studio’s bathroom while she was too intoxicated to give consent.
“As the night wore on, the 17-year-old Ms. Doe became more and more inebriated, eventually to the point that she could not possibly have consented to having sex with anyone, much less someone twice her age,” the lawsuit says.
The lawsuit said the accuser was slumped over a bathroom sink during the assault by Combs, which was followed by the unnamed assailant having sex with her against her pleas. She alleges that Pierre then forced her to perform oral sex on him again, which left her “choking and struggling to breathe.”
The documents state that Doe could “barely stand up” after the alleged assault, and that she has “limited” recollection of getting back to Michigan, partially because she was going in and out of consciousness throughout the night due to the drugs and alcohol she’d consumed.
Douglas H. Wigdor, the woman’s attorney, said in the statement that the assault “scarred” his client “for life.”
“Defendants preyed on a vulnerable high school teenager as part of a sex trafficking scheme that involved plying her with drugs and alcohol and transporting her by private jet to New York City where she was gang raped by the three individual defendants at Mr. Combs’ studio,” he said. “The depravity of these abhorrent acts has, not surprisingly, scarred our client for life.”
The lawsuit said Ventura’s case compelled her to come forward with her own allegations. In Ventura’s suit, the R&B singer claimed Combs subjected her to beatings, forced her to take drugs, and made her sleep with male sex workers—encounters he allegedly called “freak offs.”
Combs stepped down as the chairman of Revolt, the music-oriented media brand he helped found a decade ago, in the aftermath of Ventura’s lawsuit and two subsequent ones that had similar allegations.
In a statement shared to social media, Combs vehemently denied all allegations against him and claimed he was the target of people “looking for a quick payday.”
“Let me be absolutely clear: I did not do any of the awful things being alleged. I will fight for my name, my family and for the truth,” he said, adding that he’d previously sat “silently” while he “watched people try to assassinate my character, destroy my reputation, and my legacy.”
Pierre could not be reached by The Daily Beast for comment.
The lawsuit said Ms. Doe is seeking monetary damages for an adulthood of trauma stemming from the alleged assault.
