JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Sean Diddy Combs has been in jail since early last week. He's been denied bail twice after he was arrested last week on federal charges of sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy. Now the hip-hop mogul has been accused of rape in another lawsuit. NPR Music's Sidney Madden has been covering the growing list of lawsuits, the details of which are disturbing. Sidney joins us now. Hey, Sidney.
SIDNEY MADDEN, BYLINE: Hey, Juana.
SUMMERS: So can you just start by telling us what's in this new lawsuit?
MADDEN: Yeah. Thalia Graves is the latest person to file against Sean Diddy Combs, and she filed a civil suit against Combs claiming that in the summer of 2001, he and his bodyguard, Joseph Sherman, violently raped her in a Manhattan recording studio. She said she was given a drink that made her fall unconscious, and when she woke up, she was naked and tied up. That's when Combs and Sherman took turns raping her and slammed her head against a pool table when she tried to escape. And she said she passed out many times throughout this assault.
When the filing was made public yesterday, Graves and her lawyer, Gloria Allred, who is known for taking on high-profile cases as a feminist advocate - they held a press conference where she explained how much this assault has really derailed her life, physically and emotionally, and affected her all these years later.
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THALIA GRAVES: It goes beyond just physical harm caused by and during the assault. It's a pain that reaches into your very core of who you are and leaving emotional scars that may never fully heal.
SUMMERS: Sidney, Combs is already battling just a slew of cases on similar charges. So tell me, what stands out to you about this one?
MADDEN: Well, on top of the very detailed rape allegation, Graves says that in November 2023, around the same time that Diddy's ex-girlfriend Cassie Ventura first filed what would be the first in a slew of many lawsuits against him - that's when Graves found out that Combs had videotaped her attack, and he'd shown it to multiple people over the years to humiliate her and her former boyfriend.
Now, Sherman has issued a statement denying all these claims completely. But Graves also says in her suit that Sherman has been known to distribute videos of his sexual assaults as pornography and, quote, "continued to disseminate the video, including by selling it as pornography, throughout the present." So effectively, they've sold her rape for profit over the years, she's claiming.
SUMMERS: Help us understand how this latest case relates to the narrative in the federal indictment.
MADDEN: With Graves' case, there are now more than 10 civil suits filed against Combs alleging violence and sexual abuse. And when he was arrested last week on the federal charges, the big linchpin in the U.S. Attorney's office case was that Combs had been running his record label all these years as a sex trafficking criminal enterprise. And they asserted how employees would collude, conceal and sometimes participate in sexual abuse with Combs. So the claims in Graves' suit - they seem to support some of those made in the indictment showing how really organized and vindictive Combs has been throughout the decades of alleged violence.
SUMMERS: Sidney, what are the next steps in all of this?
MADDEN: As far as Graves' case, she's seeking damages in an amount determined by a jury trial. Right now, Combs is being held without bail in New York while he awaits trial for the sex trafficking and racketeering crimes, and no trial date has been set for that yet. Gloria Allred in the press conference - she refused to comment on whether or not Graves testified for the grand jury in Combs' criminal case. But Graves did say toward the end that she's, quote, "glad he's locked up, but it's a temporary feeling of relief."
SUMMERS: That's NPR's Sidney Madden. Thank you.
MADDEN: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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