NEW YORK, NY – MAY 14: Sean “Diddy” Combs attends the 2018 Fox Community Upfront at Wollman Rink, Central Park on Could 14, 2018 in New York Metropolis. (Photograph by Dia Dipasupil/Getty Photos)
cover caption
toggle caption
One other girl has come ahead with sexual assault allegations towards Sean “Diddy” Combs. Thalia Graves alleges that Combs and his bodyguard, Joseph Sherman, tied her up and violently raped her in a Unhealthy Boys recording studio the summer time of 2001, recorded the assault with out her data and later distributed the video as pornography.
In each her 26-page civil swimsuit and a televised press convention held by her lawyer, Gloria Allred, Graves says she was 25 years previous on the time of the assault and met the Unhealthy Boy proprietor whereas she was courting a document producer who was working for the label. Graves alleges Combs invited her to a Manhattan recording studio the place he provided her a drink that she believes was laced with medicine; she fell unconscious quickly after consuming it. When she wakened, Graves claims she was bare together with her palms “sure and restrained” with what she thinks was a plastic bag.
Graves says Combs entered the room bare and that he and Sherman, a.okay.a. Massive Joe, then took turns raping her vaginally and anally. When she tried to flee from underneath him, Combs slammed her head right into a pool desk, knocking her unconscious once more. When she wakened, Graves alleges that Sherman slapped her and compelled her to carry out oral intercourse till she handed out a 3rd time. The civil swimsuit states that “each males have been undeterred by the Plaintiff’s cries for assist all through the assault.”
As soon as she regained consciousness, she claims she discovered herself alone within the studio and ran out as quick as she might. The lawsuit alleges that she was “frightened of what Combs would do to her and her household if she reported him” and didn’t get a rape package. When she confided in her then boyfriend, Graves says he discouraged her from disclosing the assault out of concern of the way it might negatively influence his personal profession.
Graves says she by no means recovered from the 2001 assault, bodily or emotionally, affected by extreme melancholy, post-traumatic stress dysfunction and suicidal ideations. She claims that each Combs and Sherman contacted her periodically over time and “warned her to be silent.”
Graves is now the eleventh plaintiff to file a civil swimsuit towards the hip-hop determine since final fall. In November 2023, singer Cassandra “Cassie” Ventura, an ex-girlfriend of Combs, detailed a decade of alleged abuse, coercion and intercourse trafficking suffered at his palms. Ventura’s bombshell submitting was settled out of courtroom inside 24 hours of reports breaking, however her accusations impressed many others to return ahead with allegations of Combs’ sexual misconduct and violence. Different plaintiffs who’ve come ahead with accusations towards him embody singer Daybreak Richard, choreographer LaurieAnn Gibson and producer Rodney Jones in addition to younger girls from the early Nineties.
Combs has repeatedly asserted his innocence by way of a firewall of statements made by way of legal professionals within the final yr, however when video of the shame magnate attacking Ventura in a lodge hallway from 2016 surfaced, he posted a public apology to her on his Instagram account.
In November 2023, across the identical time of Ventura’s watershed submitting, Graves says she discovered for the primary time that the mogul had videotaped himself and Sherman raping her and had proven the video to a number of males in an effort to humiliate her and her then-boyfriend. On the time of the assault, Sherman was the founding father of Rhymes N Dimes Journal, Inc. and Graves believes the recording of her assault was additionally distributed as pornography by way of the bodyguard’s media community. Studying this brought on Graves to relive the assault and fall again into suicidal ideation.
Although Graves is now one in every of many civil filings, her accusations are the primary since Combs was arrested on federal intercourse trafficking and racketeering expenses final week in New York. The federal indictment, which alleges that Combs used his document label, Unhealthy Boy Leisure, to function a intercourse trafficking ring for his personal gratification, mirrors the narratives in most of the civil courtroom fits.
Combs pleaded not responsible to all expenses listed within the indictment and is at present being held on the Metropolitan Detention Middle in Brooklyn awaiting trial.
