Sean “Diddy” Combs, the hip-hop mogul who was arrested last month after an indictment by a federal grand jury, is now facing even more allegations of sexual misconduct.
On Tuesday, Tony Buzbee, a Texas-based attorney, revealed at a press conference that he is representing 120 accusers who allege misconduct against Combs over the course of two decades.
“We will expose the enablers who enabled this conduct behind closed doors. We will pursue this matter no matter who the evidence implicates,” Buzbee said in the press conference.
“The biggest secret in the entertainment industry, that really wasn’t a secret at all, has finally been revealed to the world. The wall of silence has now been broken.”
Andrew Van Arsdale, one of the plaintiffs’ attorneys, told the Washington Post that the forthcoming filings were “unprecedented in scope” and included allegations from both men and women, who ranged in age from nine to 38 at the time of the alleged attacks.
Van Arsdale added that there will be 120 individual lawsuits filed in New York, Los Angeles and Miami in the coming weeks.
In his preview of lawsuits to come, Buzbee said “many powerful people … many dirty secrets”. He added that his team has “collected pictures, video, texts”.
The lawyer said he’s had more than 3,000 individuals come forward to his office with accusations against Combs and that he plans to begin filing lawsuits in various states.
Buzbee said that the new civil claims against Combs will include “violent sexual assault or rape, facilitated sex with a controlled substance, dissemination of video recordings, sexual abuse of minors”.
He added: “It’s a long list already, but because of the nature of this case, we are going to make sure damn sure we are right before we do that. These names will shock you.”
The lawyer broke down the new claimants as 62% African American, from more than 25 states. He also said that 25 of the accusers were minors at the time of the incidents occurring as early as 1991, with one as young as nine at the time.
Separately, the New York Post reported Tuesday that a sexually explicit video of Combs and another A-list celebrity was allegedly being “shopped around”.
Combs is being detained at the Metropolitan detention center in Brooklyn and was denied bail after prosecutors in New York charged him with sex trafficking, racketeering and transportation to engage in prostitution. Combs pleaded not guilty.
Marc Agnifilo, Combs’s lawyer, offered an intriguing reason why government investigators allegedly found 1,000 bottles of baby oil and lubricant in Combs’s homes, which were raided in March, allegedly used during “freak-off” orgies.
“He has a big house, he buys in bulk,” Agnifilo said. “I think they have Costcos in every place where he has a home.”
Agnifilo also offered an explanation for Combs’s parties that the government calls “elaborate sex performances” and involved “force, threats of force and coercion, to cause victims to engage in extended sex acts with male commercial sex workers”.
“They called them ‘freak-offs’. But, you know, back when I was a kid in the late 70s, they were called threesomes,” he told TMZ.
Combs has denied all claims against him, calling them “sickening allegations” from people looking for “a quick payday”. The criminal allegations against the star appear based on allegations made by plaintiffs in pre-existing civil claims, including by Comb’s ex-girlfriend, Cassandra “Cassie” Ventura, who last year filed a civil suit alleging assault and sex trafficking.
That set off a cascade of similar claims against Combs, recently from Dawn Richard, a former member of the girl group Danity Kane, who alleged that Combs groped, assaulted, imprisoned and threatened her life.
In a statement following Buzbee’s public statement Tuesday, Combs’s attorney Erica Wolff said her client could not address “every meritless allegation in what has become a reckless media circus”.
Wolff added that her client “emphatically and categorically denies as false and defamatory any claim that he sexually abused anyone, including minors” and “looks forward to proving his innocence and vindicating himself in court if and when claims are filed and served”.
Source: theguardian.com
