Less than a year after an explosive lawsuit was filed by his girlfriend, rapper Sean “P. Diddy” Combs has been arrested on multiple charges relating to sex crimes. The arrest comes after multiple women accused him of coercing them to have abortions, physical abuse, rape, and sex trafficking.
Tuesday, Combs was formally charged with racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking by force, fraud or coercion, and transportation to engage in prostitution. He faces a minimum of 15 years in prison, and a maximum sentence of life in prison if found guilty. During the hearing, Combs pled not guilty, but was denied bail, and was sent to jail immediately while awaiting trial. Prosecutors argued that he should not be allowed to go free while awaiting his fate, because he had engaged in witness tampering. After one woman, Dawn Richard, sued Combs, he reportedly proceeded to call or text a potential witness, Kalenna Harper, 58 times in four days. After Harper posted on social media that she had not witnessed any of the things of which Combs was accused, Combs’ harassment stopped.
“This incident is just one way of making clear that this defendant has the ongoing ability to keep witnesses, even witnesses who might have been around for very distant-in-time abuse, in his pocket and at his disposal,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Emily Johnson told U.S. Magistrate Judge Robyn Tarnofsky, who agreed that she could not “reasonably assure his return to court or the safety of the community, or a lack of witness tampering.”
The first lawsuit
Casandra Ventura, better known by the stage name “Cassie,” filed a lawsuit against Combs in November, which is widely credited with launching the now-disgraced rapper’s eventual downfall. Ventura was known as Combs’ long-time girlfriend, but in her lawsuit, she accused Combs of raping and drugging her, and controlling virtually every aspect of her life — making it nearly impossible for her to separate herself from him.
Ventura also accused Combs of trafficking her, forcing her to participate in incidents he called “freak-offs,” or FOs, where she was drugged and raped for extended periods of time by people of Combs’ choosing. If she tried to escape or refused her to participate, she said Combs’ security team forced her. And all the while, she said Combs was physically violent, so much so that she required ongoing medical intervention.
A video was released supporting many of her claims; it showed Ventura trying to escape Combs in a hotel hallway as he chased her, clad only in a towel. After catching up to her, Combs can be seen in the footage throwing her to the ground, hitting her, kicking her, throwing objects at her, and dragging her on the ground by her sweatshirt.
Currently, Combs’ defense seems to rely on smearing Ventura and portraying the abuse as consensual.
More women come forward with stories of abuse, forced abortion
Numerous other women also accused Combs of abusing them, and in multiple instances, coercing them into abortions. Virginia V., an ex-girlfriend of Combs’, said she became pregnant several times, and that he pushed her into aborting her preborn children.
“I have this period app, and it tells me when I’m ovulating and stuff, and so I told him. I told him that I’m ovulating,” she said of the abortion. “So don’t do it. But he just did it anyway, and then I got pregnant. And he, like — okay, just get an abortion. Like, no hesitation. But this time was harder for me because I had been with him for so long and I was, like, really in love with him.”
Through tears, she added, “Part of me wanted to keep it. But he didn’t want it. … I only agreed to [the abortion] because he told me to.”
She also said he offered her $50,000 to abort another baby.
The indictment
Combs’ homes were raided in March, where supplies used for the ‘freak-offs’ were found. Authorities seized not only large amounts of drugs, but also over 1,000 bottles of baby oil and lubricant.
In the indictment, Combs is accused of threatening and abusing women, forcing them to participate in orgies, and drugging them to keep them compliant. Additionally, the indictment makes it clear that this was a wide-ranging criminal enterprise in which Combs did not act alone; his employees — including assistants, security staff, and more — arranged and engineered the ‘freak-offs’. They also were allegedly aware of the horrific physical abuse that the women suffered, which the indictment said often resulted in injuries that took days or even weeks to heal.
Combs also allegedly filmed the encounters, and used the footage as collateral to keep his victims quiet and cooperative.
The ‘freak-offs’ were so taxing that, as Ventura said in her lawsuit, women “typically received IV fluids to recover from the physical exertion and drug use.”
Trafficking and abortion
While it is not yet known if Combs forced any more of his victims to undergo abortions, traffickers are known to use abortion to both control their victims and hide the evidence of their crimes.
Abortion facilities like Planned Parenthood have been caught over and over again looking the other way when victims of abuse, rape, and trafficking are brought in to undergo abortions. Live Action’s Aiding Abusers investigation found a systemic, decades-long cover-up of child sexual abuse at Planned Parenthood. The multi-part video series covered sex trafficking, recorded cases, interviews with former workers, and more.
Numerous real-life predators are known to have been aided by Planned Parenthood and the abortion industry, and Planned Parenthood even advised actors posing as traffickers to pose as the guardians of minors and lie about the ages of their child victims.
According to a report published by the Annals of Health Law in 2014, Planned Parenthood is well known to trafficking victims. Trafficked women were said to have “significant contact with clinical treatment facilities, most commonly Planned Parenthood,” and survivors have testified to having multiple abortions, often at the demand of their pimps, with one specifically saying Planned Parenthood was chosen because “[they] didn’t ask any questions”:
I got pregnant six times and had six abortions during this time. Several of them were from a doctor who was a client — he did them back door — I came in the back door after hours and paid them off the books. This kept my name off any records…At least one of my abortions was from Planned Parenthood because they didn’t ask any questions.
These experiences have been given credibility by numerous studies showing that traffickers use abortion to subjugate their victims and keep them able to work.
Combs is one of a number of celebrities in recent years arrested for trafficking, who are also known to have forced their victims into abortions. R. Kelly and Ghislaine Maxwell, both notorious sex traffickers in the public eye, are known to have coerced their victims to have abortions.
