A fourth woman, who was a minor at the time, accuses Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs of sexual assault
For the fourth time in three weeks, a woman has filed a sexual assault lawsuit against music mogul Sean Combs, best known as Diddy.
The victim, who filed the suit as Jane Doe, says that in 2003, when she was a 17-year-old high school student, she was “sex trafficked” and “gang raped” by Combs, then 34; Harve Pierre, then president of Combs’ Bad Boy Records; and a third unnamed assailant.
“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. 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,” Combs said in a statement posted on his Instagram account.
Combs’ representatives were not immediately available for comment but have previously denied claims of sexual assault against him.
In the suit, filed Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, the woman alleges that she met Pierre and an unnamed man at a lounge in Detroit and was persuaded to accompany them on a private jet to fly to New York City where they would meet Combs. Pierre told her that the rap impresario was “his best friend,” and that Combs “would love to meet” her, at his recording studio.
According to the filing, the accuser said that Pierre smoked crack cocaine in one of the lounge’s bathrooms, and then forced her to give him oral sex.
Following the assault, she was escorted by the third, unnamed man to a private jet at an airport in Pontiac, Mich., and flown to Teterboro, N.J.
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Once in New York, the group went to Daddy’s House Recording Studio, owned and operated by Combs and Bad Boy. While there, the three men hit on her, “stroking her body, asking to see her ‘ass’ and telling her how ‘hot’ and ‘sexy’ she was” while Combs and Pierre “plied Ms. Doe with drugs and alcohol,” according to the suit.
As the evening wore on, the woman claimed that she became “more and more inebriated” and unable to consent to sex. However, Combs directed her to the studio’s bathroom where he “removed” her skirt and underwear, “and penetrated her from behind with his penis while she hung over the sink.”
The victim alleged that Combs then sat on a chair outside of the bathroom and “watched” as the third man assaulted her, even as she asked him to stop. This attack was followed by another by Pierre, who she said “violently forced her to give him oral sex.” The act left her “choking and struggling to breathe,” according to the complaint.
Throughout the assaults, the accuser said that she drifted in and out of consciousness due to the drugs and alcohol that the men gave her.
Afterward, she said she fell to the floor, lying in the fetal position. She was later put on a plane and flown home. She only recalls being in a car and that her “underwear was missing.”
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The filing includes multiple photos of the victim said to have been taken at the studio during the night in question. In the photos, the woman is wearing cut-off denim shorts and a T-shirt with the D&G logo, and her face is blurred for anonymity. In one, she is sitting on the rapper’s lap.
“As alleged in the complaint, Defendants preyed on a vulnerable high school teenager as part of a sex trafficking scheme that involved plying her with 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. The depravity of these abhorrent acts has, not surprisingly, scarred Doe for life,” Douglas H. Wigdor, the woman’s attorney, said in a statement.
The lawsuit comes less than a month after Combs settled with Casandra Ventura, the R&B singer and his former partner, known as Cassie, who accused him of rape, sexual assault and sex trafficking.
In Ventura’s suit, the singer claimed that Combs had abused her for nearly a decade, subjecting her to beatings, forcing her to take a variety of drugs and to engage in sex acts with male sex workers — encounters he called “freak offs.”
Combs’ lawyer Ben Brafman “vehemently” denied the allegations, calling them “offensive and outrageous.” He added that the lawsuit was “riddled with baseless and outrageous lies, aiming to tarnish Mr. Combs’ reputation and seeking a payday.”
Within a week, Ventura’s lawsuit against Combs was followed by two others.
The lawsuit alleges that Combs filmed the attack and distributed the footage throughout New York state without the woman’s consent.
Joi Dickerson-Neal accused Combs of drugging and raping her in 1991, recording the attack and then distributing the footage throughout New York without her consent.
According to the suit, Dickerson-Neal, then a student at Syracuse University, met Combs during a break and “reluctantly agreed” to have dinner with him at a Harlem restaurant and that he “pushed” for her to keep him company afterward. The suit states that Combs fed the woman drugs that put her in a “physical state where she could not independently stand or walk.” When Combs and the woman arrived at a music studio, she was unable to get out of the vehicle; he then “proceeded to a place he was staying to sexually assault her,” according to the filing.
In a statement to the New York Times, Jonathan D. Davis, a lawyer for Combs, denied the claims, describing them as “unsubstantiated allegations” and a “money grab.” He said his client is an “easy target for accusers who attempt to smear him” because of his fame and success.
A woman who later identified herself as Liza Gardner filed a third suit in which she claimed Combs and Guy singer Aaron Hall sexually assaulted her, choking her several days later.
A spokesperson for Combs denied the allegations.
All three lawsuits were filed under the Adult Survivors Act, a law that went into effect in November 2022 in New York, that allowed individuals who said they were sexually assaulted a one-year window during which they could sue their abusers, even if the statute of limitations had expired.
The suits against Combs were among a wave of lawsuits filed under the ASA before it expired Nov. 24. The alleged assailants included Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler, music executive Antonio “L.A.” Reid and former Grammys chief Neil Portnow.
Pierre, who is named in the most recent sexual assault suit with Combs, was also sued under the ASA last month by an unnamed former assistant, who accused him of grooming, sexual harassment and sexual assault.
According to the filing, Pierre, whose LinkedIn profile says that the former Bad Boy president left the company in 2017, “used his position of authority” as the accuser’s boss and sexually assaulted her on “multiple occasions in New York City and other locations throughout the country” during 2016 and 2017.
“We have recently become aware of a lawsuit filed in New York by a former employee. The allegations are from many years ago that were never brought to the attention of the company. Neither the plaintiff nor the executive is current employees of the company. We are now investigating the allegations, and our top priority is the safety and well-being of our employees,” a Bad Boy Entertainment spokesperson said in a statement to People.
This latest suit was filed after the ASA deadline, but falls under the New York Gender-Motivated Violence Protection Law, which allows survivors a two-year window to file claims between March 1, 2023, and Feb. 28, 2025, even if the statute of limitations on the abuse has expired.
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