Combs, Sean

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    Inside the Sean ’Diddy’ Combs Hotline: The Makings of a Mass Tort

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    In a room full of cubicles, workers in headsets read from their computer screens, addressing callers who dialed a 1-800 number. They have a script.“Were you or your loved one sexually abused by Sean ‘Love’ Combs, known as Diddy, Puff Daddy and P. Diddy?”“If the abuse occurred at a party, please list the name of the party. What kind of party was it?”Their employer, Reciprocity Industries, is a legal services company located in a low-slung building in Billings, Mont., more than 2,000 miles from the Brooklyn jail where Mr. Combs awaits trial on federal racketeering and sex trafficking charges.For years, the company has helped seed litigation by fielding complaints from people hurt by natural disasters, weedkillers or abusive clergy.Now it’s the central collection point for sexual assault allegations against Mr. Combs.When a call related to Mr. Combs comes in, Reciprocity employees walk callers through a questionnaire that asks them to share the details of their complaints, including potential witnesses.Janie Osborne for The New York TimesSome complaints come in through the phone, others arrive online in response to ads promoted on Facebook and Instagram. (A news conference where a backdrop displayed the hotline in large red numbers made headlines last October.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Jay-Z Sues Rape Accuser and Lawyers, Saying They Knew Claim Was False

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      The anonymous woman withdrew her sex abuse suit last month, but the entertainer says in court papers she has since admitted her account was fabricated. She and her lawyer deny that.Jay-Z filed a lawsuit on Monday against the anonymous woman who withdrew her rape lawsuit against him last month, asserting that she and her lawyers knew the allegations were false but proceeded with the claim anyway.The lawsuit, brought in federal court in Alabama, where the woman lives, was filed against both the accuser and her lawyers, Tony Buzbee and David Fortney. In the suit, Jay-Z, born Shawn Carter, said the woman had admitted to his representatives that she had made up the story.But in a statement, Mr. Buzbee said the suit has “no legal merit” and that the woman continues to stand by her account.The woman originally sued Jay-Z last year, naming him as a defendant in one of the dozens of cases that have accused Sean Combs of sexual abuse. In this case, the plaintiff accused Mr. Carter and Mr. Combs of raping her when she was 13, at an after-party following the MTV Video Music Awards in 2000. After an NBC News interview with the plaintiff highlighted inconsistencies in her account, the plaintiff acknowledged that she had “made some mistakes” in presenting the allegations.For about two months, the plaintiff’s lawyers defended the veracity of her allegations in court papers, but last month, they withdrew her claim with no public explanation.In the new lawsuit, lawyers for Mr. Carter assert that the plaintiff — who is not identified — has “voluntarily admitted directly to representatives of Mr. Carter that the story brought before the world in court and on global television was just that: a false, malicious story.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Faces Four New Sex Abuse Lawsuits, Filed in One Day

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      The suits cite the Victims of Gender-Motivated Violence Protection Law, which opened a look-back window for alleged assaults and is expiring soon.Four new sex abuse lawsuits have been filed against Sean Combs, including one from a woman who says she was assaulted while a contestant on a VH1 reality show in which people vied to be hired as the hip-hop mogul’s personal assistant.The new cases, which were filed on Thursday in New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan, join the dozens of civil lawsuits that have been filed against Mr. Combs since Casandra Ventura, his former girlfriend, made bombshell allegations against him in November 2023. Ms. Ventura’s suit was quickly settled, though at least 50 civil suits have followed hers with various accusations of sexual misconduct or violence. He has denied the allegations.In September, Mr. Combs was also indicted on federal charges of sex trafficking, racketeering conspiracy and transportation to engage in prostitution. He has denied those accusations and pleaded not guilty, and his trial is scheduled to begin in May.In one of the new suits, Kendra Haffoney says that she was raped by Mr. Combs around 2008, while she was a contestant on VH1’s “I Want to Work for Diddy,” which ran on the cable channel starting that year. On the show, various aspiring assistants tried to impress the demanding and mercurial Mr. Combs to earn a place as his right hand. Ms. Haffoney is credited with appearances on two episodes.In her suit, she alleges that she was handed a spiked drink at an after-party in the SoHo area of Manhattan, where Mr. Combs and others were partying and “many sexual situations” were underway, making her uncomfortable. She became delirious, the suit says, and Mr. Combs “guided her head down” to perform oral sex on him. She passed out and awoke later at the cast house, and “knew that she had been sexually assaulted, raped” by him, according to the court papers.Another suit was filed by Justin Gooch, who said that in 1999, when he was 16, he met Mr. Combs at the Tunnel, then a popular dance club in Manhattan. The suit says that Mr. Combs gave him ecstasy and alcohol, and they then went to a bathroom, where Mr. Combs gave Mr. Gooch more drugs and “anally penetrated” him without his consent. According to the court papers, when he finished, Mr. Combs said to him, “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Files to Dismiss Sex-Trafficking Charge Due to ‘Racist Origins’

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      The music mogul’s lawyers filed a motion to dismiss a sex-trafficking charge, saying that the law involved has “racist origins.”Lawyers for Sean Combs filed a motion on Tuesday night seeking the dismissal of one of the sex trafficking charges he is facing, arguing that the hip-hop mogul is being unfairly prosecuted based on his race.Mr. Combs, who has pleaded not guilty to the charges against him and is awaiting trial in a Brooklyn jail, was indicted on federal racketeering and sex trafficking charges — the most serious of which carries a mandatory minimum sentence of 15 years in prison.His lawyers’ filing focuses on a lesser sex trafficking charge, which stems from a federal law known as the Mann Act. The law makes it illegal to transport a person “with intent that such individual engage in prostitution.”Mr. Combs’s lawyers contend that the law has “racist origins” and that it is being deployed against a “prominent Black man” for allegedly using an escort service to transport male escorts across state lines to have sex with his girlfriends.“The use of escorts, male or female, is common and indeed widely accepted in American culture today,” they write. To emphasize what it depicted as the noncriminal nature of the conduct, the filing notes that the chief executive of the escort service that Mr. Combs is said to have used has been interviewed in the media and was featured in a Showtime reality series.The lawyers questioned whether any white person had been charged under the law based on similar allegations.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Jay-Z Accuser Drops Rape Lawsuit Against Him and Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs

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      The anonymous plaintiff’s account was attacked as inconsistent after an NBC report called details from her account into question.The anonymous woman who accused Jay-Z and Sean Combs of raping her when she was 13 years old dropped her lawsuit on Friday against the hip-hop moguls.Jay-Z’s lawyers had pointed to what they described as “glaring inconsistencies” in the woman’s account, citing information that came to light in an NBC report that called details from her allegations into question.Jay-Z’s lawyers had asked a judge to dismiss the complaint, but the plaintiff’s lawyers at that time stood by the accuser in court papers, writing that being a victim of sexual abuse can cause memory lapses. Court papers submitted by the plaintiff on Friday said the suit had been “voluntarily dismissed with prejudice,” meaning that it cannot be refiled.In a statement, Jay-Z, who vehemently denied the claims from the outset, celebrated the decision, writing that the suit was “never going anywhere.”“The fictional tale they created was laughable, if not for the seriousness of the claims,” he said. “I would not wish this experience on anyone. The trauma that my wife, my children, my loved ones and I have endured can never be dismissed.”Lawyers for Mr. Combs, who is in a Brooklyn jail awaiting a trial on racketeering and sex trafficking charges, said in a statement on Friday that the dismissal was “yet another confirmation that these lawsuits are built on falsehoods, not facts.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Sues NBC Over Documentary That He Says Defamed Him

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      The documentary, “Diddy: Making of a Bad Boy,” began streaming on NBCUniversal’s Peacock platform last month.Sean Combs, the music mogul facing federal racketeering and sex trafficking charges, sued NBCUniversal and its streaming service Peacock on Wednesday, accusing them of airing a documentary that “shamelessly advances conspiracy theories” about him.The documentary, “Diddy: The Making of a Bad Boy,” is one of several about Mr. Combs’s life and career that have been developed amid mounting allegations of sexual abuse and violence that led to the criminal charges and more than three dozen civil lawsuits.Mr. Combs, who is in a Brooklyn jail awaiting his criminal trial, has pleaded not guilty to the charges, has denied sexually assaulting anyone and has depicted the allegations as fabrications or distorted accounts of consensual sex. In recent weeks, he has begun to go on the offensive, filing lawsuits against people and companies he says have defamed him.The newest defamation suit focuses in part on a segment of the Peacock documentary in which one interview subject asserts that Kim Porter, Mr. Combs’s longtime girlfriend with whom the mogul had three children, had been murdered.The documentary includes an image of Ms. Porter’s autopsy report, which says she died of lobar pneumonia, and notes that the local police did not suspect foul play. She died in 2018 at 47 years old.But it also includes an interview with Albert Joseph Brown, a former singer who goes by the name Al B. Sure!, that the suit characterizes as defamatory. In the interview, Mr. Brown, who had a child with Ms. Porter, describes seeing her and says, “It was two, three weeks prior to her murder — am I supposed to say ‘allegedly’?”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Jay-Z Will Seek Dismissal of Assault Lawsuit His Lawyer Calls a ‘Sham’

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      The woman who accused him of raping her in 2000, when she was a minor, acknowledged to NBC that there were inconsistencies in her account, but stood by her claim.Lawyers for Jay-Z plan to ask a judge to toss a lawsuit accusing the rapper of raping a 13-year-old in 2000, pointing to what they described as “glaring inconsistencies” that emerged in an NBC interview of the accuser, who was not named in the suit.In the lawsuit, which was filed last week, the unnamed accuser said that she had been raped by Jay-Z (born Shawn Carter) and Sean Combs at a party at a private residence after the MTV Video Music Awards in Manhattan in 2000. Mr. Carter strongly denied the allegation.NBC News published an interview with the accuser on Friday evening in which she acknowledged inconsistencies in her account, but maintained that her allegation of assault was true.The woman’s lawsuit claimed that after the encounter she was picked up by her father, whom she called from a gas station. But NBC reported that her father, who would have had to drive hours from his home in upstate New York to pick up his daughter following the after-party, did not recall having done so. The father was also unnamed in the report.The plaintiff, who now lives in Alabama, also told NBC that she had spoken to the musician Benji Madden, a member of the band Good Charlotte, at the party after the awards that night. But Mr. Madden, who was not accused of any wrongdoing in her suit, was on tour in the Midwest at the time.Alex Spiro, a lawyer for Mr. Carter, wrote a letter Friday night to U.S. District Court Judge Analisa Torres saying that Mr. Carter intends to file a motion to strike the complaint, citing the NBC report. “The interview outs plaintiff’s allegations for what they are: a sham,” he wrote in the letter.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Jay-Z, Accused in Suit of Raping Minor With Sean Combs, Calls It Blackmail

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      The entertainer said the suit, which accuses him of assaulting an unnamed 13-year-old girl in 2000, was an effort to gain settlement money by putting forward “idiotic” claims.Jay-Z was accused of raping a 13-year-old girl with Sean Combs in a lawsuit filed Sunday by an unnamed plaintiff. He vehemently denied the allegation and accused the lawyer who brought the suit of trying to blackmail him with false claims.The allegations against the billionaire rapper and hip-hop mogul came as part of the flurry of litigation against Mr. Combs, who is facing federal sex trafficking and racketeering charges and at least 30 lawsuits accusing him of sexual misconduct. One of those lawsuits, filed in October, accused Mr. Combs and an anonymous celebrity of raping the teen at an after-party following the MTV Video Music Awards in New York in 2000.On Sunday, the plaintiff amended the lawsuit to name Jay-Z as the other celebrity, asserting in court papers that he and Mr. Combs took turns raping her after she arrived at the party and drank part of a drink that made her feel “woozy and lightheaded.” Jay-Z called the claims “idiotic” and said that he came from a world where “we protect children.” Mr. Combs has denied all allegations of sexual assault and misconduct and has pleaded not guilty to the criminal charges.The lawsuit was filed by Tony Buzbee, a personal injury lawyer in Houston, who has filed at least 20 sex assault lawsuits against Mr. Combs and used a phone hotline, Instagram and a news conference to find clients.In an extensive response, Jay-Z, 55, said he had received a demand letter from Mr. Buzbee appearing to seek a settlement but that the letter had the opposite effect: “It made me want to expose you for the fraud you are in a VERY public fashion. So no, I will not give you ONE RED PENNY!!” the statement read.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Is Denied Bail a Third Time

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      A federal judge ruled against the music mogul’s efforts to be released from jail while he awaits trial on sex trafficking and racketeering charges.Sean Combs, the embattled music mogul who has been charged with sex trafficking and racketeering, was denied bail again on Wednesday after a federal judge rejected his lawyers’ third attempt to challenge his detention.Judge Arun Subramanian wrote in the order that prosecutors had presented evidence of Mr. Combs’s propensity for violence and that he had violated jail regulations by trying to obscure his communications with the outside world.The judge wrote that “there is evidence supporting a serious risk of witness tampering.”The decision orders Mr. Combs to remain at the Metropolitan Detention Center, a hulking federal facility on the Brooklyn waterfront, until his trial, which is scheduled for May. Mr. Combs, 55, has been detained since his arrest in September after a nearly 10-month federal investigation.After Mr. Combs’s arrest, his lawyers offered a robust bail package that they argued was more than sufficient to assuage the court’s concerns about the risks of his release. They offered a $50 million bond, secured by Mr. Combs’s Florida mansion and said that Mr. Combs would pay for round-the-clock security, with visitors restricted to family. Apart from contact with his lawyers, he would have no access to phones or the internet.Prosecutors asserted that there was no way the government could trust that private security guards, paid for by Mr. Combs, could be depended on to prevent efforts toward obstructing justice, which, they argued, he had been engaging in before and after his indictment.Judge Subramanian agreed, writing in the order that “the Court doubts the sufficiency of any conditions that place trust in Combs and individuals in his employ — like a private security detail — to follow those conditions.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More