120 additional sexual assault lawsuits to be filed against Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs

Lawyers for dozens of new accusers allege that some assaults took place at Combs’s infamous “White Parties,” and involved victims as young as 9 and 14.

Sean Combs arrives at a pre-Grammy event at the Beverly Hilton Hotel on Jan. 25, 2020, in Beverly Hills. (Mark Von Holden/Mark Von Holden/Invision/AP)

A team of lawyers announced Tuesday that it would be filing more than 100 sexual assault lawsuits against Sean Combs, a massive legal action that appears to have few if any precedents in the #MeToo era. The lawsuits would exponentially increase the number of sexual abuse accusations against the embattled music producer, commonly known by his stage name Diddy.

“The biggest secret in the entertainment industry, that really wasn’t a secret at all, has finally been revealed to the world,” said Tony Buzbee, one of the lead attorneys, at a Houston news conference. “The wall of silence has now been broken.”

Plaintiffs will also be represented by Andrew Van Arsdale, who previously represented hundreds of victims in a sexual abuse lawsuit against the Boy Scouts of America. He called the forthcoming filings “unprecedented in scope” in an interview with The Washington Post.

Van Arsdale said Combs’s alleged victims include a roughly equal number of men and women, who ranged in age from 9 to 38 at the time of the attacks. The alleged assaults span a 20-year period in the 2000s and 2010s, when Combs was at the height of his celebrity. The victims felt compelled to come forward after Combs was arrested and denied bond last month, Van Arsdale said, explaining that the criminal charges validated their experiences after many victims spent years blaming themselves.

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Van Arsdale said 120 individual lawsuits will be filed in New York, California and Florida beginning within the next month.

Erica Wolff, an attorney for Combs, denied the allegations in a statement Tuesday. “As Mr. Combs’ legal team has emphasized, he cannot address every meritless allegation in what has become a reckless media circus. That said, Mr. Combs emphatically and categorically denies as false and defamatory any claim that he sexually abused anyone, including minors. He looks forward to proving his innocence and vindicating himself in court, where the truth will be established based on evidence, not speculation.”

The alleged assaults happened primarily in New York — either in Manhattan or the Hamptons — as well as Los Angeles and Miami, Buzbee said at the news conference. They took place at well-known venues, hotels and private residences, including holiday parties and album release celebrations. Assaults were also alleged to have occurred at auditions and Combs’s famous and well-attended White Parties, which he held regularly in the early aughts.

“The day will come when we will name names other than Sean Combs. And there’s a lot of names,” Buzbee said at the news conference.

“The names that we’re going to name, assuming our investigators confirm and corroborate what we’ve been told, are names that will shock you,” he added. “I’m talking here about not just the cowardly but complicit bystanders, that is those people that we know watched this behavior occur and did nothing. And I’m talking about the people that participated, encouraged it, egged it on. They know who they are.”

According to Buzbee, more than half of the alleged victims reported their assault to police or at a hospital. Toxicology reports found that some of the alleged victims had horse tranquilizers in their system, he said. Combs and his associates will also be accused in these lawsuits of threatening victims to stay silent, and doling out $10,000 hush money payments.

Most of the alleged victims are African American and nearly a third are White, Buzbee said. Of the 120 alleged victims, 25 were minors at the time the alleged assaults. Some of the alleged victims have been in contact with the FBI, he said.

Combs — who has generally denied all accusations against him — has previously been sued for sexual assault nearly a dozen times, by women and men, and has been held without bond in a Brooklyn jail since he was arrested last month on federal charges of sex trafficking and racketeering.

Buzbee’s and Van Arsdale’s law firms called for potential victims to come forward after the arrest. Over 10 days, they received more than 3,000 responses, said Van Arsdale. The team of lawyers narrowed that number to more than 100 cases they were able to corroborate and considered credible.

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On top of violent sexual assault and sexual abuse, lawyers said they also plan to accuse Combs of facilitating sex with a controlled substance, false imprisonment, dissemination of video recordings and sexual abuse of minors.

Van Arsdale told The Washington Post that he was struck by the similarities in the accusations. Many of the alleged victims were trying to break into the music industry when they received an invitation to an event hosted by Combs, he said.

He said that the lawsuits will name a number of co-defendants, including members of Combs’s family, record labels, event venues and other partygoers. While attorneys didn’t share details about the alleged associates during the news conference, Van Arsdale told The Post that they include “household names.”

Buzbee told reporters that he planned to pursue “anyone who participated in any way” in the alleged assaults, including anyone who happened to be present at the time and “did nothing to report or stop it.”

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Many of the sexual assault lawsuits filed against Combs within the past year contain details of alleged drugging and trafficking — often at parties. These accusations of physical and sexual attacks go back as far as the early 1990s to nearly the present day.

Notable accusers include two of Combs’s former artists, Casandra Ventura (who goes by the stage name Cassie) and Dawn Richard, as well as producer Rodney “Lil Rod” Jones, who worked on Combs’s most recent record, “The Love Album.”

Several of Combs’s alleged victims accused Combs of wielding his wealth, influence and power in the music industry to traffic them and coerce them into sex acts. The Grammy-winning artist and producer — who has rapped under the stage names Puff Daddy and P. Diddy — has also been accused of filming the alleged sexual assaults and using them to silence his alleged victims.

In March, Department of Homeland Security agents raided Combs properties in Miami and Los Angeles. Some of the materials recovered from the raids were shared in a 14-page grand jury indictment that was unsealed last month. According to the filing, law enforcement found defaced AR-15s and ammunition, narcotics and “more than 1,000 bottles of baby oil and lubricant” that they allege may have been used in Combs’s sex parties, which he called “freak offs.”

These sex parties were a frequent site of sexual abuse and violence against Combs’s victims and were frequently filmed to pressure victims to stay silent, according to the federal indictment, which was unsealed after Combs was arrested Sept. 16 in New York. The indictment also alleges that Combs used members of his staff throughout his multiple media, entertainment and lifestyle companies to help cover up his alleged crimes.

Combs is being held without bail at a Brooklyn jail, awaiting a trial that could put him in prison for life. He has denied all the charges against him as well as the claims in earlier lawsuits. However, Combs said he took “full responsibility for my actions” in a video that showed him beating Ventura in the hallway of a Los Angeles hotel, after CNN published the footage in May.

Spencer Kuvin, a Florida-based attorney who represented multiple women in sexual assault lawsuits against Jeffrey Epstein, saw similarities between that case and Combs, as well as the imprisoned movie producer Harvey Weinstein.

“It takes one brave person to really step forward and then all of a sudden to finally start to open up,” he said of accusers like Ventura, who was the first to sue Combs last year. “It happened with Epstein. And it’s now going to happen with Sean Combs.”

But a massive group of lawsuits at once can be problematic, he said. “You’re bound to have individuals within the group that are possibly not credible. … And then it paints the entire group.”

Both Buzbee and Van Arsdale have experience with high-profile cases. Buzbee represented more than a dozen women who accused quarterback Deshaun Watson of sexual assault (many of which were settled). He also filed a $750 million lawsuit against the rapper Travis Scott on behalf of the victims who died in a crowd surge at Scott’s Astroworld concert in 2021 (it was later settled). Buzbee, a former Houston mayoral candidate, also defended Rick Perry, a former governor of Texas who faced abuse of power charges in 2014, and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton during his impeachment trial last year. In 2010, Buzbee was part of the legal team against BP in the Deepwater Horizon oil spill case.

Van Arsdale represented hundreds of clients in the Boy Scouts of America sexual abuse case settlement in 2023. His law firm partnered with Abused in Scouting, a group of law firms that worked together to represent former Boy Scouts who claimed to be victims of sexual assault.

The allegations against Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs

The charges: A grand jury indicted Sean “Diddy” Combs on charges of racketeering conspiracy and sex trafficking. Combs has been ordered to remain in federal custody as he awaits trial. Here’s what we know about the charges that Diddy is facing and the full indictment document.

Lawsuits: Among other lawsuits, Combs has been accused in sexual assault lawsuits by more than 100 alleged victims. Dawn Richard of Danity Kane has accused him of years-long patterns of sexual assault, vindictive and violent behavior, and sex trafficking — all of which Combs has denied.

Cassie Ventura: R&B singer Cassie Ventura accused Combs of raping, sex trafficking and abusing her in a 2023 lawsuit that was settled quickly. Months later, disturbing footage from 2016 emerged that showed Combs viciously assaulting Ventura at a hotel. Combs apologized for the assault in the video, which prompted Ventura to release a statement about domestic violence.

Raid by law enforcement: The Department of Homeland Security raided multiple homes belonging to Combs in March as part of an investigation related to sex trafficking.