(Los Angeles) Another woman filed a lawsuit Tuesday against Sean “Diddy” Combs, alleging the music mogul and his head of security raped her and filmed the assault at his New York recording studio in 2001.
The complaint filed in federal court in New York, the latest in a series of similar lawsuits against Combs, comes a week after his arrest and the release of a federal sex trafficking charge against him.
Thalia Graves alleges that when she was 25 and dating an executive who worked for Combs in the summer of 2001, Combs and Joseph Sherman lured her to a meeting at Bad Boy Recording Studios. She said they picked her up in an SUV and during the drive gave her a drink that was “probably laced with drugs.”
According to the complaint, Mr.me Graves lost consciousness and woke up to find herself tied up in Combs’ office and living room at the studio. The two men raped her, slapped her, slammed her head against a pool table and ignored her screams and pleas for help, the complaint said.
At a press conference in Los Angeles with one of his lawyers, Gloria Allred, Mr.me Graves claimed she suffered from “flashbacks,” nightmares and intrusive thoughts” in the years that followed.
“It was difficult for me to trust others to form healthy relationships or even to feel safe in my own skin,” Ms.me Graves, crying while reading a statement.
She said it is “a pain that reaches deep into who you are and leaves emotional scars that may never fully heal.”
Combs remains jailed without bail in New York on federal charges accusing him of running a vast network that facilitated sex crimes and committed shocking acts of violence, using blackmail and other tactics to protect the rapper and his loved ones.
He has pleaded not guilty to conspiracy and sex trafficking. His attorney has said he is innocent and will fight to clear his name. His representatives did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment on the latest lawsuit. There was no immediate indication from the trial or Combs’ representatives whether Joseph Sherman has another attorney who could comment on the allegations.
The lawsuit was filed under New York City’s Gender-Based Violence Victims Protection Act, and comes during a two-year period that suspends statutory time limits and allows sexual assault victims to sue for abuse that might otherwise be too old to prosecute.
Mme Allred declined to say whether his client spoke to investigators in Combs’ criminal case. The indictment in that case only lists allegations since 2008.
The pursuit of Mme Graves also alleges that late last year, after Combs’ former singing protégé and girlfriend Cassie filed a complaint that sparked the wave of accusations against him, Ms.me Graves learned through her ex-boyfriend that Combs had recorded her rape, shown it to others and sold it as pornography.
The Associated Press generally does not name people who say they have been sexually assaulted unless they come forward publicly, as Ms.me Graves and Cassie, whose legal name is Casandra Ventura.
M’s complaintme Graves says Combs and Sherman contacted her repeatedly in the years after the assault, threatening retaliation if she told anyone what had happened to her. At the time, she was going through a divorce and custody dispute and feared she would lose her young son if she revealed anything, the complaint says.
Mme Graves said at the press conference that the guilt and shame associated with it “often made me feel worthless, isolated and sometimes responsible for what happened to me.”
The complaint seeks that damages be determined at trial and that all copies of the video be accounted for and destroyed.
It also names as defendants several companies owned by Combs, a three-time Grammy winner and founder of Bad Boy Records who was one of the most influential hip-hop producers and executives of the past three decades.