A new sex crime lawsuit has been filed against Sean Combs, the rapper formerly known as Puff Daddy or Diddy, making it eight since last November. In this case, the allegations are somewhat different, as the plaintiff, a woman named Adria English, has accused him of sex trafficking, while half a dozen victims accuse him of assault, abuse and rape. The lawsuit does not ask for a specific penalty or amount, but rather seeks “unspecified damages.” English claims to have suffered emotional trauma, intimacy issues and very painful memories as a result.
The events occurred two decades ago, in 2004, as English and his lawyers have now recounted in the tabloid. TMZwhich exclusively reports the complaint, have contacted Combs to hear his version, but he has not responded. According to English’s version, she and the artist met that summer two decades ago, when her boyfriend was doing a casting to be a model for Combs. According to her, the rapper offered both the boy and another model a job if they performed oral sex on him. The plaintiff’s boyfriend refused, but then an associate of the artist offered him the job again on the condition that he take his girlfriend, that is, English, to a late summer party that Combs was going to hold in the luxurious Hamptons area, near New York, so that she could perform as a go-go dancer. She has provided evidence of her own that she attended the party, such as photographs in which she poses dressed in white, which was the dress code for the event.
Both English herself—who was then working as a porn actress under the name Omunique—and her boyfriend agreed to the deal and worked at the party in early September 2004 and at others that followed. She says she was forced to drink alcohol laced with drugs like ecstasy and was actively encouraged to flirt with the guests at the events. And although at first it was just a flirtation, she says Combs gradually “groomed” her into sex trafficking, until he eventually demanded that she have relations with a famous jewelry and watch businessman named Jacob Arabov, known in the music world as Jacob the Jeweler, and is now another defendant. She was, the suit says, “forced into sexual intercourse” with him — she took a photo with him afterwards, included in court documents — and was paid $1,000 more than usual that day. The rapper himself personally congratulated her and told her she had “done her job well.” In fact, like so many of his other victims, he promised her he would advance her career and even help her join a female band.
That was just the beginning. From then on, she began to be “passed” from hand to hand, to other people, from party to party, and she also suffered sexual assaults. According to her, a good part of this was orchestrated by a woman called Tamiko Thomas, a kind of Madame who managed the sex trafficking operations that Combs organized. Both have photos together, and the former actress claims that Thomas was for the rapper “what Ghislaine Maxwell was for Jeffrey Epstein,” that is, his getter and manager. With this she implies that there are more women who passed through this sexual network, of which she was a victim until 2009. Then, when she managed to escape and return to California, Combs threatened her and turned against her, assuring that neither she nor her boyfriend would enter the music industry, as a punishment.
English’s account fits with the seven other lawsuits that have been filed against Combs in recent months. Most are from women who were initially pleasantly surprised by the businessman’s cooperative attitude in helping them make a name for themselves in the worlds of entertainment, music or fashion, until he began to sexually abuse them, sometimes for very long periods of time and sometimes overlapping.
The first to come forward was his ex-girlfriend, Casandra Ventura, a model known as Cassie, who in her harsh lawsuit explained how he beat her, raped her, abused her, drugged her, kept her away from her family and forced her to participate in orgies and various sexual encounters. The abuse lasted for years, as they began their relationship in 2005 and ended it (after comings and goings) in 2018. However, Ventura withdrew the lawsuit just one day after filing it after reaching an out-of-court settlement. A shocking recording that CNN leaked in May shows the beatings he subjected her to in a Los Angeles hotel, which she had reported months earlier.
Later that month, two more women filed charges: Joi Dickerson-Neal, who accused him of a rape he recorded in 1991, when she was 19; and Liza Gardner, who explained that he assaulted her and a friend in 1990. In December, the most serious one arrived, because, like this one from English, it also involves sexual trafficking and, moreover, of minors. A fourth anonymous woman accused Combs of raping her “between the spring and fall of 2003” when she was a minor, explaining how the president of his record company flew her one night from Detroit to New York (where the rapper raped her in his studio) and returned her the next morning. The fifth lawsuit came in February from one of Combs’ regular producers, Rodney Jones Jr., who accused him of non-consensual touching. In May, the last two cases took place: that of model Crystal McKinney, who revealed that in 2003 the rapper forced her to perform oral sex on him after drugging her, again, in his studio; and that of a woman called April Lampros, who explained that he assaulted her when she was studying fashion in New York (first he promised her help to make a career in the sector) and then abused her, raping her on four occasions in the mid-nineties, in a series of attacks that caused her “physical injuries, serious emotional distress, humiliation and anxiety”. Combs is being investigated by the US Department of Homeland Security, which searched two of his homes at the end of March, and according to experts he could face serious charges and even jail.
#Woman #sues #Sean #Combs #sex #trafficking #2000s #eighth #complaint
