Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Faces New Lawsuit Claiming ‘Gang Rape’ Of Teen In 2003
Another woman – the fourth in three weeks – is suing Sean “Diddy” Combs over allegations of sexual assault. In a lawsuit filed Wednesday in New York federal court, an unnamed Jane Doe accuser claims she was “sex trafficked” and “gang raped” by Combs, former Bad Boy Records president Harve Pierre and another man in 2003 when she was 17 years old.
“Ms. Doe has lived with her memories of this fateful night for 20 years, during which time she has suffered extreme emotional distress that has impacted nearly every aspect of her life and personal relationships,” the woman’s lawyers write. “Given the brave women who have come forward against Ms. Combs and Mr. Pierre in recent weeks, Ms. Doe is doing the same.
The new case comes just weeks after Combs was hit with explosive allegations of rape by R&B singer and longtime romantic partner Cassie. That case quickly settled, but Combs was then sued by two other women who say they were sexually assaulted by the hip hop mogul. Combs has strongly denied all of the allegations. Another case was filed against Pierre and Bad Boy, alleging sexual assault.
In the complaint filed in court Wednesday, the accuser’s lawyer Douglas Wigdor (the same attorney who represented Cassie) says the new allegations “are in many ways even more egregious” than the prior cases. “Given the brave women who have come forward against Ms. Combs and Mr. Pierre in recent weeks, Ms. Doe is doing the same.”
In a public statement in response to the new allegations, Combs said: “ENOUGH IS ENOUGH.”
“For the last couple of weeks, I have sat silently and watched people try to assassinate my character, destroy my reputation and my legacy,” Combs wrote. “Sickening allegations have been made against me by individuals 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.”
The new lawsuit contains graphic allegations of sexual assault.
The alleged victim claims that she met Pierre at a Detroit club in 2003, when she was just a junior in high school. After he “smoked crack cocaine” and “sexually assaulted Ms. Doe by forcing her to give him oral sex,” she says she flew to New York on Combs’ private jet to visit him in his Manhattan recording studio.
While at the studio, the lawsuit claims that Combs, Pierre and an unnamed third man “plied Ms. Doe with drugs and alcohol” until she was so inebriated that she “she could not possibly have consented to having sex with anyone, much less someone twice her age.”
“While at the studio, Ms. Doe was gang raped by Mr. Combs, the Third Assailant and Mr. Pierre, in that order,” Wigdor writes in the lawsuit. The lawsuit claims the unnamed man “raped Ms. Doe as she told him to stop,” and that Pierre “violently forced her to give him oral sex, during which Ms. Doe was choking and struggling to breathe.”
After the attack, the lawsuit says the accuser “could barely stand up” and “had to be helped to walk out of the building and back into a car.” She says she was then flown back to Michigan.
“Defendants preyed on a vulnerable high school teenager,” Wigdor said in a statement announcing the lawsuit. “The depravity of these abhorrent acts has, not surprisingly, scarred our client for life.”
The previous cases against Combs – as well as the flurry of other high-profile sexual assault cases filed over the last month – were brought under New York’s Adult Survivors Act, a law that temporarily suspended the statute of limitations for bringing such cases.
Wednesday’s case was not filed under the ASA, because that law expired on Thanksgiving. Instead, it was filed under the Victims of Gender-Motivated Violence Protection Law, a New York City provision that created a similar “lookback” window that doesn’t expire until 2025.
Bill Donahue
Billboard