- Five new civil lawsuits alleging sexual assault were filed against Sean “Diddy” Combs on Sunday.
- One accuses Combs of raping a 13-year-old girl at an after-party following the 2000 VMAs.
- The lawsuit alleges two other celebrities, who were not identified, were involved.
A Texas-based attorney filed five new lawsuits against Sean “Diddy” Combs on Sunday.
In one of the lawsuits, filed in the Southern District of New York, a woman is accusing the hip-hop mogul of drugging and raping her when she was 13 while at an after-party following the 2000 MTV Video Music Awards.
The anonymous Jane Doe plaintiff from Alabama accuses Combs of raping her at a New York City house party, as two other unnamed celebrities watched. The party took place after the awards show at Radio City Music Hall, the lawsuit says.
Those celebrities are only identified in the lawsuit as “Celebrity A” and “Celebrity B.”
It is unclear why they are not identified in the court papers, and attorneys for the plaintiff did not immediately respond to a request for comment by Business Insider on Monday.
Tony Buzbee, the Texas attorney who filed the lawsuits along with co-counsel AVA Law Group and New York local counsel Curis Law, noted in a statement Monday that several other individuals are referenced in the case filings, but are not at this time formally named as defendants.
Combs’ attorneys have consistently denied any accusations of sexual assault.
Combs rose to fame as a rapper and producer in the late 1990s before going on to build a business empire. He went on to become one of the first — and richest — hip-hop moguls of all time.
In 1998, he founded fashion label Sean Jean, which was bringing in more than $525 million in retail sales by 2010.
By 2017, he had reported pretax earnings of $130 million, allowing him to notch the top spot on Forbes’ list of highest-paid celebrities for the year. At the time, his sprawling business organization — which has since dwindled — was worth as much as $820 million.
The lawsuit from Sunday is among many that attorney Buzbee recently promised to file against Combs on behalf of 120 accusers.
Buzbee’s firm has so far filed at least 11 civil lawsuits against Combs.
Those complaints, all filed on behalf of Jane or John Does, include many identical pages of abuse allegations against Combs, aside from the new paragraphs of the incident-based allegations for each victim.
Buzbee said in his statement that he and his team “expect to be filing cases weekly naming Mr. Combs and others as defendants as we continue to gather evidence and prepare the filings.”
In the complaint filed Sunday stemming from the 2000 VMAs after-party, Jane Doe alleges she was initially held down and raped by “Celebrity A” while Combs and “Celebrity B” — a woman — looked on.
“After the male celebrity finished, Combs then vaginally raped Plaintiff while the Celebrity A and Celebrity B watched,” the lawsuit alleges.
The lawsuit alleges Combs then attempted to force the plaintiff to perform oral sex on him, but she instead hit him in the neck, and he stopped.
The lawsuit says the plaintiff grabbed her clothes and left the bedroom, “roaming naked through the house looking for the exit as the party continued.”
Once outside, the lawsuit says Jane Doe put her clothes back on and made her way to a gas station where she called her father and “admitted that she had lied about her whereabouts, and asked him to pick her up.”
A star-studded event
The 2000 VMAs were hosted that year by brothers Marlon and Shawn Wayans. The star-studded event would be most remembered for Tim Commerford, of Rage Against the Machine, climbing scaffolding and refusing to come down after losing an award to Limp Bizkit. Combs attended the awards show that year with Jennifer Lopez, whom he was dating at the time.
The lawyers for the Jane Doe plaintiff said in the complaint that the young teen ended up at the party after having a friend drop her off at Radio City Music Hall in the hopes that she could attend.
“Determined to get into an afterparty, she approached several limousine drivers, attempting to talk her way into the VMAs,” the lawsuit says.
The lawsuit alleges that she spoke to a limo driver who said he worked for Combs.
The lawsuit says the plaintiff was asked to sign a non-disclosure agreement before she entered the house party, where she “recognized many celebrities.”
The plaintiff says her drink was drugged, and when she began feeling “woozy and lightheaded,” she went into an empty bedroom to lie down.
Diddy is seeking a gag order
Attorneys for Combs on Monday reused the same statement they gave last week in response to the initial wave of lawsuits filed by Buzbee’s firm, saying the complaints were an attempt to “garner publicity.”
“Mr. Combs and his legal team have full confidence in the facts, their legal defenses, and the integrity of the judicial process,” Combs’ attorneys said in the statement to BI. “In court, the truth will prevail: that Mr. Combs has never sexually assaulted anyone — adult or minor, man or woman.”
Combs was indicted last month by a Manhattan grand jury on federal charges of sex trafficking, racketeering conspiracy, and transportation for the purposes of prostitution. He has pleaded not guilty.
Since then, the rapper and entrepreneur has been held without bail in a notorious Brooklyn jail pending his scheduled May 5 sex-trafficking trial in Manhattan federal court.
The recent onslaught of lawsuits and negative press has not been lost on Combs’ defense attorneys in that criminal case.
On Sunday, they filed a motion asking the judge overseeing Combs’ case for a limited gag order barring all prospective witnesses and their attorneys from talking about their allegations outside the context of a court proceeding.
The Combs accusers now coming forward with civil lawsuits are also potential witnesses in his criminal trial, his lawyers said.
Federal rules specifically bar such witnesses and their attorneys from making statements outside of court that could taint a jury.
“As the Court is aware, Mr. Combs has been the target of an unending stream of allegations by prospective witnesses and their counsel in the press,” Combs’ attorneys wrote to the judge. “These prospective witnesses and their lawyers have made numerous inflammatory extrajudicial statements aimed at assassinating Mr. Combs’s character in the press.”
