Sex Crimes

Subterms

    More stories

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in Music

      Sean Combs Fights Lawsuit by Music Producer Alleging Sexual Misconduct

      by

      The hip-hop mogul’s lawyers are seeking the dismissal of a suit from Rodney Jones Jr., arguing it is baseless and “replete with far-fetched tales of misconduct.”Lawyers for Sean Combs filed court papers on Monday seeking the dismissal of a civil suit by a music producer who accused Mr. Combs of making unwanted sexual contact, arguing that the lawsuit was baseless and “replete with far-fetched tales of misconduct.”The filing, in Federal District Court in Manhattan, is the latest effort by the hip-hop impresario’s legal team to dismiss a series of recent lawsuits that accuse him of sexual assault and misconduct. The suit by Rodney Jones Jr., a music producer who worked on Mr. Combs’s most recent album, accuses Mr. Combs of groping him and forcing him to solicit prostitutes; he also alleges that Mr. Combs threatened him with violence.In their response, lawyers for Mr. Combs wrote that Mr. Jones’s claims lack basic details, including where and when the alleged groping occurred, along with how, exactly, Mr. Combs pressured him into hiring prostitutes.“Such vague allegations fall well short of federal pleading standards,” wrote one of the lawyers, Erica A. Wolff, who argued that the real purpose of the lawsuit is to “generate media hype and exploit it to extract a settlement.”One threat of violence that the lawsuit alleges was that Mr. Combs once threatened to “eat Mr. Jones’s face,” but the exact context for the comment was unclear in Mr. Jones’s suit, a 98-page document that details a litany of allegations from his time as a part of Mr. Combs’s entourage.Mr. Jones’s lawyer, Tyrone A. Blackburn, called the filing a “desperate Hail Mary attempt.”“Nothing in this complaint is far-fetched,” he said. “Nothing in this complaint is too vague.”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

    • 138 Shares99 Views

      in Television

      Gabriel Olds, Los Angeles Actor, Is Arrested on Sexual Assault Charges

      by

      Gabriel Olds, who played the Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson in the 2021 movie “The Eyes of Tammy Faye,” has been accused of sexually assaulting three women.A Los Angeles actor was arrested on Wednesday after three women accused him of luring them into a “false sense of security” on dates and then sexually assaulting them, the police said.The actor, Gabriel Olds, 52, has had roles in television, film and stage productions since the 1990s, including a turn as Pat Robertson, the Baptist minister and broadcaster, in the 2021 movie “The Eyes of Tammy Faye,” starring Jessica Chastain and Andrew Garfield.The Los Angeles police said in a statement on Wednesday that investigators had identified three women whom Mr. Olds sexually assaulted since 2013, as well as two other women who reported “lesser violent sexual conduct.” Mr. Olds, who was charged with seven counts of felony sexual assault, was being held for $3.5 million bail.It was not immediately clear if he had a lawyer.Because Mr. Olds often traveled for work, detectives believe there may be more victims in other parts of the country who have not come forward, the Los Angeles police said.A New York native and Yale alumnus, Mr. Olds used his status as an Ivy League graduate with a long list of film credits to meet women and arrange dates, the police said. He met some of the women on dating apps, the police said.One of the three women, who was 41, reported on Jan. 19, 2023, that Mr. Olds had raped her at her home in Los Angeles, the police said. The two other women later reported similar assaults dating back to 2013, the police said.“We heard the same story again and again,” Detective Brent Hopkins, a supervisor in the special assault section of the Los Angeles Police Department, said in a statement. “Mr. Olds started off charming, but then used brutal violence to carry out these rapes. Some of these survivors suffered in silence for years before finding the strength to speak up. Now that he’s off the streets, we want to make sure everyone has a chance to be heard.”Mr. Olds’s television credits include appearances in two episodes of “NCIS: Los Angeles” and in a single episode of the NBC series “Blindspot,” according to IMDB. On the New York stage, he played Rodolpho in a 1997 production by the Roundabout Theater Company of Arthur Miller’s “A View From the Bridge.” More

    • 113 Shares129 Views

      in Movies

      The Best True Crime to Stream: Truly Random Crimes

      by

      Four picks across television, film and podcasting that highlight a fundamental human fear: complete lack of control.Watch or listen to any amount of true crime, and it quickly becomes evident that some of the most disturbing cases involve wrongdoers who know their victims. At times, that might be simply an acquaintance, a co-worker, a classmate or a neighbor.But most often it’s someone much closer, like a partner, former partner, friend, parent or child. Truly random crimes, in which the perpetrators have no relationship to the victims, are relatively rare, which is comforting — until it isn’t. Hearing about such crimes, where any sense of perceived control is stripped away, can prey on our greatest fears.Here are four offerings across television, podcast and film that examine these dark, disconcerting fringes.Documentary Film‘American Nightmare’This three-part 2024 Netflix docuseries about the abduction of Denise Huskins could easily top a streaming list about shockingly botched investigations. It’s stunning how quickly she and her husband, Aaron Quinn (her boyfriend at the time), were dismissed and labeled liars by law enforcement, then mocked by the news media after they had endured a horrific attack. But just as astonishing is how bizarre the crime was.The documentary, from the filmmakers behind “The Tinder Swindler,” Felicity Morris and Bernadette Higgins, incorporates interrogation footage and new interviews to illustrate the widespread reluctance to believe the victims. We witness Quinn being pressed as though he were a suspect and Huskins being branded the “real-life Gone Girl,” referring to Gillian Flynn’s 2012 novel about a woman who stages her own kidnapping and frames her husband for her disappearance.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

    • 113 Shares119 Views

      in Music

      My Working Relationship With Diddy in the Music Industry

      by

      A thing happened between Sean Combs and me. Unlike what he has been accused of over the last eight months, what occurred between us was not sexual. It was professional — demonstrative of the way dynamic and domineering men moved in our heyday. Combs and I worked together a lot. Competed, in our way. So often I thought I came out on top. I was mistaken. I had reason to fear for my life. What happened was insidious. It broke my brain. I forgot the worst of it for 27 years.It was July 1997. In the fading smoke of the murders of Tupac Shakur and the Notorious B.I.G., I was named editor in chief of a music magazine called Vibe. Started by Quincy Jones and Time Inc. in 1992, the magazine chronicled Black music and culture with rigor and beauty, 10 issues a year, for an audience that was relentlessly underserved. When I took over, we thought hip-hop might have died with our heroes, and we were determined not only to keep it alive but also to give it the cultural credit it was due.Hip-hop was both in mourning and in marketing meetings. Combs, Biggie’s creative partner and label boss, was the personification of this dichotomy. His Bad Boy Records was having a $100 million year — much due to the work of Biggie and Mase, as well as Combs’s own debut album, “No Way Out,” which was anchored by the blockbuster Biggie tribute “I’ll Be Missing You” featuring Faith Evans. Other singles, “It’s All About the Benjamins” and “Been Around the World,” functioned as a score for hip-hop’s megawatt moment — its commercial evolution and international expansion. (“No Way Out” would go on to sell over seven million copies.) So I wanted Combs on the cover of Vibe’s December 1997/January 1998 double issue. And I wanted him to wear white feathered wings.Faith Evans and Sean Combs filming the 1997 video for “I’ll Be Missing You,” in memory of the Notorious B.I.G., Evans’s husband. Mychal Watts/Associated PressMy point of reference was the poster for “Heaven Can Wait,” a 1978 film starring Warren Beatty. The movie is about a quarterback who dies before his time and is reincarnated as an idiosyncratic and callous billionaire. Vibe’s working cover line for Sacha Jenkins’s article was “The Good, the Bad and the Puffy.” Not so elegant, but it would work if the fashion director Emil Wilbekin and I got Combs (then known as Puffy, or Puff Daddy) to put on the angel wings. And if we also got a shot that looked even slightly mischievous, we could do a split run of the cover — one with heavenly signifiers and another with hellish ones. Possible cover line: “Bad Boy, Bad Boy, Whatcha Gonna Do?”The photo shoot took place in Manhattan in September 1997. I had probably said hello to Combs at an event, but the shoot was the first time I was around him for an extended period. Either it was a crowded set or I just felt claustrophobic. I wore yoga pants and an oversize T-shirt. I remember wanting to minimize my bust more than my bra was already doing. I remember cajoling. And I remember knowing that as a Black woman, I was in a no-win situation: to fail was to live up to my male bosses’ low expectations, and to succeed was to invite their resentment. That day, Combs was begrudgingly compliant. We finally got him to shrug on the white feathered wings.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

    • 100 Shares129 Views

      in Movies

      French Director Benoît Jacquot Is Charged With Rape

      by

      Mr. Jacquot, 77, was accused of assaulting two actresses and barred from working with minors. He has denied any wrongdoing.The French movie director Benoît Jacquot was charged on Wednesday with the rape of two actresses, Julia Roy and Isild Le Besco, several years ago, according to the Paris prosecutor’s office.Mr. Jacquot, 77, is one of two directors facing a wave of #MeToo accusations that have roiled France’s movie industry since the actress Judith Godrèche came forward to say he had raped her during an abusive relationship that started when she was 14 and he was 39.In the wake of Ms. Godrèche’s accusations, Ms. Roy, 34, and Ms. Le Besco, 41, publicly accused Mr. Jacquot of keeping them in similarly abusive relationships and of sexually abusing them when they were much younger actresses who starred in his films.Ms. Le Besco has accused Mr. Jacquot of raping her between the ages of 16 and 25. Ms. Roy, who acted in some of Mr. Jacquot’s films between 2016 and 2021, had accused him of sexual and physical abuse.Mr. Jacquot and the other director who has been accused, Jacques Doillon, 80, were taken into police custody on Monday for questioning.Both men have denied any wrongdoing.Mr. Doillon was released on Tuesday on medical grounds and without being charged, the Paris prosecutor’s office said, although it added that it was still examining how to proceed in his case. Ms. Godrèche has accused Mr. Doillon of sexually assaulting her twice.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

    • 125 Shares149 Views

      in Music

      The-Dream, Hitmaker for Beyoncé and Rihanna, Is Accused of Rape

      by

      In a lawsuit, a former protégée of Terius Gesteelde-Diamant says he entangled her in an abusive relationship. Mr. Gesteelde-Diamant called the allegations “untrue and defamatory.”Terius Gesteelde-Diamant, a top songwriter and producer for Beyoncé, Rihanna and other stars under the name The-Dream, has been accused of rape and sexual battery in a lawsuit filed on Tuesday by a former protégée.Chanaaz Mangroe, who performed as Channii Monroe, says in her suit that in 2015, Mr. Gesteelde-Diamant used promises to promote her career to entangle her in an abusive relationship in which he repeatedly forced her to have sex, strangled her and once made a video recording of an intimate encounter and threatened to show it to others.As The-Dream, Mr. Gesteelde-Diamant is one of the most powerful producers behind the scenes of the music industry, an eight-time Grammy winner who helped make some of the biggest pop and R&B hits of the last two decades, including Rihanna’s “Umbrella,” Justin Bieber’s “Baby” and Mariah Carey’s “Touch My Body.” He has forged a particularly close creative bond with Beyoncé, credited as a writer and producer on her signature female-empowerment anthems like “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)” and “Break My Soul,” and working on each of the superstar’s studio albums since 2008.But Ms. Mangroe’s suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, portrays Mr. Gesteelde-Diamant as an abusive Svengali-type figure, dangling the promise of fame and success before an aspiring artist while controlling her life, forcing her into unwanted sex and physically abusing her.The suit also accuses Mr. Gesteelde-Diamant of sex trafficking, a claim that has been cited in a number of recent civil lawsuits — including against Sean Combs, the hip-hop mogul known as Diddy or Puff Daddy — over accusations of harboring or transporting a victim of sexual assault by fraud or coercion. Ms. Mangroe’s suit cites the Sexual Abuse and Cover-Up Accountability Act, a California law that allows people to bring sexual assault cases even if the statute of limitations for incidents they allege have expired.“What Dream did to me made it impossible to live the life I envisioned for myself and pursue my goals as a singer and songwriter,” Ms. Mangroe said in a statement. “Ultimately, my silence has become too painful, and I realized that I need to tell my story to heal. I hope that doing so will also help others and prevent future horrific abuse.”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

    • 138 Shares189 Views

      in Music

      Sean Combs Sells Stake in Revolt, the Media Company He Founded

      by

      After a wave of lawsuits accusing Mr. Combs of sexual assault, the two are “completely separated and dissociated from each other,” the company’s chief executive said.Sean Combs, the hip-hop mogul who has been facing mounting legal scrutiny over allegations of sexual and physical abuse, has sold his majority stake in Revolt, the media company that he founded, the organization announced Tuesday.The largest shareholder group at Revolt, a private company, is now made up of employees, its chief executive, Detavio Samuels, said in an interview ahead of the announcement.Now known best for popular video podcasts such as “Drink Champs,” “The Jason Lee Show” and “Caresha Please,” Revolt was started by Mr. Combs more than a decade ago as a music industry-focused cable channel meant to boost Black representation on television.In January, after a wave of lawsuits were filed against Mr. Combs, he agreed to start the process of separation from Revolt, Mr. Samuels said.Mr. Combs’s business empire has shrunk significantly since November, when Casandra Ventura — his former girlfriend, who performs music as Cassie — filed a lawsuit accusing him of years of physical and sexual abuse. The suit was settled in a day, but five more followed from women who accused Mr. Combs of sexual assault.Mr. Combs, 54, who is also known as Puff and Diddy, said last year that the lawsuits contained “sickening allegations” from “individuals looking for a quick payday.”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

    • 150 Shares189 Views

      in Music

      Cassie After Sean Combs Assault Footage: ‘Open Your Heart to Believing Victims’

      by

      The singer, who sued the hip-hop mogul over allegations of rape and abuse, posted a statement after 2016 video emerged last week showing him assaulting her in a hotel.Cassie, the singer who accused Sean Combs of years of physical and sexual abuse in a lawsuit that she settled, on Thursday addressed footage of the music mogul assaulting her that emerged last week, saying in an Instagram post that domestic violence had broken her down to “someone I never thought I would become.”“Thank you to everyone that has taken the time to take this matter seriously,” the singer, whose full name is Casandra Ventura, wrote in the post. “My only ask is that EVERYONE open your heart to believing victims the first time. It takes a lot of heart to tell the truth out of a situation that you were powerless in.”It is the first time that Ms. Ventura has spoken publicly about her accusations against Mr. Combs, whom she dated for about a decade, since her lawsuit was filed last November and settled in one day. Since then, as Mr. Combs has faced a cascade of legal troubles, Ms. Ventura has spoken about her claims only through her lawyer, who released a statement calling the footage of the assault “gut-wrenching” when it was published by CNN last week.In the footage from 2016, which appeared to come from security cameras, Ms. Ventura is seen waiting for an elevator in a hotel when Mr. Combs, wearing a towel, grabs the back of her sweatshirt and throws her to the ground, kicking her twice before dragging her down the hallway away from the elevators. The video corroborates some of the details from Ms. Ventura’s lawsuit, which recalls Mr. Combs assaulting her at an InterContinental Hotel in Los Angeles in 2016 as she tried to leave.Although his lawyer denied the allegations in the lawsuit at the time, Mr. Combs released an apology video following the release of the footage, saying that he took “full responsibility” for his actions and that he had since been to therapy and rehab.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