Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs accused of sexual abuse by two more women
FILE - Music mogul and entrepreneur Sean “Diddy” Combs arrives at the Billboard Music Awards in Las Vegas, May 15, 2022. Two more women have come forward to accuse Combs of sexual abuse, one week after the music mogul settled a separate lawsuit with the singer Cassie that contained allegations of rape and physical abuse. Both of the new suits were filed Thursday, Nov. 24, 2023. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP, File)
NEW YORK (AP) — Two more women have come forward to accuse Sean “Diddy” Combs of sexual abuse, one week after the music mogul settled a separate lawsuit with the singer Cassie that contained allegations of rape and physical abuse.
Both of the new suits were filed Thursday on the eve of the expiration of the Adult Survivors Act, a New York law permitting victims of sexual abuse a one-year window to file civil action regardless of the statute of limitations.
The filings detail acts of sexual assault, beatings and forced drugging allegedly committed in the early 1990s by Combs, then a talent director, party promoter and rising figure in New York City’s hip-hop community.
One of the accusers, Joi Dickerson, said she was a 19-year-old student at Syracuse University when she agreed to meet Combs at a restaurant in Harlem in 1991. After their date, Combs “intentionally drugged” her, then brought her home and sexually assaulted her, according to the filing.
Without her knowledge, Combs videotaped the assault and later shared it with several friends in the music industry, the suit alleges. The public exposure sent Dickerson into a “tailspin,” contributing to severe depression that landed her in the hospital and forced her to drop out of college.
In a separate lawsuit filed Thursday, an unnamed woman accused Combs and an R&B singer, Aaron Hall, of sexually assaulting her and a friend, then beating her several days later.
The woman — identified only as Jane Doe — said that she and her roommate returned to Hall’s home with him and Combs after a music industry event in 1990 or 1991. The accuser said she was coerced into having sex with Combs. Afterward, as she was getting dressed, “Hall barged into the room, pinned her down and forced Jane Doe to have sex with him,” the suit states.
When the victim later spoke to her friend, who is also not named, she learned that her friend “had been forced to have sex with Combs and Hall in another room,” according to the suit. “Upon information and belief, when Combs finished with Jane Doe, he and Hall switched, and they commenced assaulting Jane Doe’s friend,” the suit states.
A few days later, an “irate” Combs allegedly showed up at the home of the two women in an attempt to stop them from speaking out about the abuse. He then choked the woman identified as Jane Doe until she passed out, the suit states.
In an emailed statement, a spokesperson for Combs denied the allegations, accusing the two women of seeking to exploit the New York law that temporarily extended the statute of limitations.
An email inquiry to Hall was not returned.
Tyrone Blackburn, an attorney for the unnamed accuser, said his client was in the process of securing medical documents and witness statements to support her suit, which was filed late Thursday “in an effort to preserve the statute of limitations.”
The suit brought by Dickerson notes that the victim filed police reports in New York and New Jersey after the abuse. Inquiries to the New York City Police Department were not immediately returned. It was not clear which other jurisdictions the reports may have been filed.
After the filmed assault, Dickerson said she approached friends in the music industry asking them to confirm the existence of the “revenge porn” tape, but was rebuffed by those who were “terrified that Combs would retaliate against them and that they would lose future business and music opportunities.”
The Associated Press does not typically name people who say they have been sexually abused unless they come forward publicly, as Dickerson has done.
In years after the alleged assaults, Combs, now 54, would found his own label, Bad Boys Records, helping to produce Mary J. Blige and Biggie Smalls on his way to becoming one of the most influential hip-hop producers and executives in the genre’s history.
The pair of lawsuits follow a separate set of explosive allegations made last week by Cassie Ventura, who said that Combs subjected her to a pattern of abuse during their yearslong relationship, which began in 2005, when she was 19 and he was 37.
Among the allegations, Ventura said Combs plied her with drugs, subjected her to “savage” beatings, and forced her to have sex with male prostitutes while he masturbated and filmed them. When she tried to end the relationship in 2018, Combs raped her, she alleged.
The lawsuit was settled one day after it was filed for an undisclosed sum.
In a statement shared by her lawyers, Ventura said she wanted to resolve this matter “on terms that I have some level of control.”
Combs said: “We have decided to resolve this matter amicably. I wish Cassie and her family all the best. Love.”