Sean Combs, the rapper known as Diddy, has again been accused of rape in a new lawsuit by a woman who says Combs and two other men raped her nearly two decades ago, when she was 17 years old.
The most recent lawsuit is the fourth filed against Combs in recent weeks. Combs has been accused of sexual assault by several women, including his former girlfriend Casandra Ventura, AKA Cassie. Combs and Ventura settled her lawsuit to their “mutual satisfaction” one day after it was filed.
In the latest filings, the woman, who is identified as Jane Doe, said she was still in high school when she was “gang raped” and “sex trafficked” by Combs and two associates, according to the complaint filed on Wednesday in federal court in Manhattan, New York.
The woman said she first met Combs and Harve Pierre, the president of the record label Bad Boy Records, at a lounge in the Detroit, Michigan, area in 2003. She claims that Pierre convinced her to accompany him, a third man and another member of the group on a private jet back to Combs’s recording studio in New York.
Before leaving for Combs’s studio, Pierre “directed” the woman to go to a bathroom with him in the lounge, the lawsuit says. While in the bathroom, Pierre allegedly smoked crack cocaine and later “forced” her to perform oral sex on him.
When they reached Combs’s studio in New York, Combs, Pierre and a third person “plied Ms Doe with drugs and alcohol”, the lawsuit reads.
“[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 filing read.
The woman said that Combs later directed her to accompany him to a bathroom at the studio. Combs then allegedly “removed” her skirt and underwear and raped her.
The woman said in the filing that she was “in and out of consciousness” during the alleged assault, due to the drugs and alcohol she was given earlier. She claimed that, at some point, Combs had been replaced by the third man, who then raped her while Combs watched from a chair outside the bathroom despite her pleas for him to stop.
She said she was later escorted out of the building and helped to a car as “she could barely stand up following the gang rape”. She was later flown back to Michigan, but remembered very little from her journey home.
The court document also shows several images of the woman, with her face blurred, in what is reportedly Combs’s music studio. In one provided image, the woman is sitting on Combs’s lap.
In the suit, the woman says that reading about other cases filed against Combs and Pierre “gave [her] the confidence to tell her story as well”.
In a statement, Combs denied the allegations saying they came from another individual “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 the statement, posted to X, formerly known as Twitter.
All three previous lawsuits filed against Combs were made under the Adult Survivors Act, a New York state law that gave individuals a one-year window to sue those they accused of sexual assault, even if the statute of limitations has run out.
The most recent filing was done under New York City’s Victims of Gender-Motivated Violence Act, which allows survivors of gender-based violence to file civil suits against their perpetrators, even past the statute of limitations.
