Disgraced music mogul, Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs has been violent to women for decades and has used his power in the entertainment industry to silence his victims, according to a new bombshell report.
Former friends, acquaintances, employees, Bad Boy artists and industry insiders told Rolling Stone that Diddy is a menacing figure who uses his public celebrity-adored persona to hide a pattern of sexual abuse and violence.
According to the report, Diddy’s history of sexual abuse traces back to before his music career started, with women who knew him at Howard University saying he showed signs of an abusive personality even then.
Before leaving Howard after two years, Diddy had already built a reputation as an ambitious young man who threw legendary parties, but several former students spoke of a darker side.
Several alleged witnesses remembered a vicious alleged attack on a young woman, who they say was beaten with a belt by the rapper outside her dorm.
Diddy reportedly showed up outside the young woman’s dorm and began screaming for her to come outside. Quickly, other students allegedly started running down the halls saying Diddy, then known as ‘Puff,’ was beating the young woman.
Another student who witnessed the alleged incident told RS that Diddy was using what appeared like a belt to hit the young woman ‘all over the place’ as she cried and others tried to intervene.
‘He “whupped her butt like really whupped her butt,”‘ the witness added.
Despite the incident, Diddy soon dropped out of Howard to start his meteoric career at Uptown records, where he helped nurture artists such as Mary J Blige.
But according to one of his accusers, Joi Dickerson-Neal, he already had a bad reputation by 1991, when he asked her on a dinner date and allegedly spiked her drink when she used the restroom.
Dickerson-Neal says in a lawsuit that Diddy then raped her at a nearby residence, and filmed the assault, which he later showed to others ‘like a trophy.’
Diddy has called her claims ‘false, offensive, and salacious.’
Liza Gardner, who has also filed a lawsuit against Diddy, claims she was 16 when Diddy pressured her to drink and raped her in 1990 after meeting at a MCA Records event in Manhattan.
Gardner said that Diddy’s friend Uptown singer-songwriter Aaron Hall came in the room and raped her as she was getting dressed following the first assault.
The alleged victim says the rapper then showed up where she was staying and choked her until she almost passed out because he feared she would speak about the alleged rape.
Diddy has also denied Gardner’s claims.
By December 1991, Diddy’s aggressive demeanor at Uptown Records had become an issue, and he came close to criminal records after organizing a charity basketball that left nine people dead after a stampede.
Diddy eventually returned to Uptown, but his attitude had earned him too many enemies, with some colleagues reportedly calling him ‘Satan,’ and his mentor CEO Andre Harrell fired the 23-year-old in 1993.
At the time, Harrel reportedly said: ‘I’m gonna fire Puff, he’s getting a little too big for himself. He’s bothering people.’
Diddy went on to grow Bad Boy records, with the help of a new artist, Christopher Wallace, a.k.a. the Notorious B.I.G.
Kirk Burrowes, Bad Boy’s co-founding partner, told RS he saw Diddy attack a woman in the label’s office in 1994, claiming he and another employee had to tear the producer off the woman after they heard screaming and shattered glass.
Former Bad Boys employee Felicia Newsome said in another incident she had to hold Diddy back because he was about to ‘beat this girl’s a**.’
In another lawsuit against Diddy, former Arista intern April Lampros claims he attacked her in a parking garage in the 1990s and forced her to perform oral sex on him. She said it was one of four ‘horrific’ sexual assaults she experienced with Diddy.
Sources told RS that after Biggie’s murder, Diddy’s career sky-rocketed, only amplifying his ‘bullying’ behavior.
Wendy Williams said in her 2004 book that Diddy ‘spent a lot of money and used a lot of his influence to try to crush me’ after she posted an alleged sexual photo showing him with another man on her website.
In 1999, Interscope Records executive Steve Stoute said Diddy barged into his office and beat him up because Stoute did not cut him from a scene in a Nas music video.
‘He punched me in the face, and then he grabbed the phone and bashed me in the head with it,’ Stoute told the Los Angeles Times.
Diddy privately settled with Soute, reportedly for $500,000, avoiding a seven-year sentence by pleading to a reduced charge of harassment.
Months later, Diddy was arrested for a nightclub shooting that left three people injured. He and his then-girlfriend Jennifer Lopez fled the shooting and Bad Boys star Shyne, a.k.a. Jamal Michael Barrow was convicted of firing the shots.
Diddy was charged with weapons possession and attempted bribery, with prosecutors saying he offered money to witnesses who said he had fired the shots. However, Combs was acquitted after a six-week trial in 2001.
Diddy threw a party to celebrate the verdict; ‘Anna,’ a graphic designer working with Bad Records at the time said the producer began massaging her. Anna says she later learned Diddy had tried to ‘solicit her for sex.’
Many of RS’s sources claimed even when women tried to leave Diddy, the producer would continue to contact them and try to control them.
When Jennifer Lopez ended their relationship sometime after the club shooting, he allegedly sent staffers to try to win her back by standing outside MTV’s studios with signs.
Moreover, after learning that late label executive Shakir Stewart had become romantically involved with his ex-partner Kim Porter, Diddy beat him up in Italy, where the music industry was gathered for L.A. Reid’s 2000 wedding.
Model Crystal McKinney, meanwhile, has claimed that in 2003 Diddy pressured her to take a hit from a ‘laced’ joint before forcing her to perform oral sex on him despite her resistance.
A woman claims in another lawsuit against Diddy that she was 17 when the same year she met former Bad Boy President Harve Pierre in a Detroit-area lounge.
Pierre allegedly called Diddy and introduced him to the young woman, before she she agreed to board a private plane to New Jersey to meet the star in person. The woman says she was then gang raped by Diddy, Pierre, and an unnamed third man after they plied her with drugs and alcohol.
Diddy has denied the claims.
Diddy’s ex-girlfriend Cassandra ‘Cassie’ Ventura unleashed major claims when she filed a now-settled lawsuit against him last year.
In the days before Cassie’s suit was filed, Diddy was preparing to deal with the fallout, music producer Rodney ‘Lil Rod’ Jones said in a sworn declaration in April.
Diddy’s moves included giving $1million to his alma mater Howard University and the football team at Jackson State University. He also launched the e-commerce platform for black entrepreneurs Empower Global and announced he would give Bad Boy artists their publishing rights.
Danity Kane’s Aubrey O’Day said she refused the offer because it came with a mandatory nondisclosure agreement.
Cassie said in her suit that she met label boss Diddy, then 37, in 2007 when pulled her into a bathroom during her 21st birthday and forcibly kissed her, leaving her in tears.
The singer claimed he pressured her to do drugs and have same year, quickly becoming ‘deeply entrenched’ in her life – paying her rent, having her medical records sent to him, and lashing out at any perceived slights.
When Cassie had a brief romance with rapper Kid Cudi, Diddy allegedly beat her and threatened to blow up the rapper’s car. Cudi later told The New York Times his car exploded after the threat.
She said the abuse eventually progressed into sex trafficking, with Diddy pressuring her to do drugs and have filmed sexual encounters with male prostitutes, which the producer called ‘freak-offs.’
In one alleged incident, a severely intoxicated Diddy dangled one of Cassie’s friends over a 17th-floor balcony in 2015.
Cassie’s lawsuit also described being viciously assaulted at a Los Angeles hotel – months before CNN released video of Diddy beating the singer as detailed in the documents.
The rapper reportedly continued harassing Cassie for years after their relationship ended, even mentioning her in his acceptance speech when he was given a BET Lifetime Achievement Award in June 2022.
Cassie’s friend, songwriter Tiffany Red, told RS that Cassie was trying to negotiate her escape from Bad Boy records as Diddy was posting on Instagram about her first pregnancy.
‘It’s not like we were negotiating with just her record label… We were negotiating with her abuser,’ Red said.
According to her now-settled lawsuit, Cassie received treatment at a rehabilitation center to heal from the ‘physical and psychological repercussions’ of her relationship with Diddy.
Since she settled her suit, five other women have accused Diddy or rape or sexual assault, with their claims going as far back as 1990.
One of the accusers, Joi Dickerson-Neal, told RS she decided to sue Diddy to ‘make sure the world sees that this man who rose to the level of an “icon” is actually sick and has left so many victims in [the wake of his] unpunished disgusting behavior for years.’
A lawyer for Diddy told RS: ‘Mr. Combs cannot comment on settled litigation, will not comment on pending litigation, and cannot address every allegation picked up by the press from any source, no matter how unreliable.
‘We are aware that the proper authorities are conducting a thorough investigation and therefore have confidence any important issues will be addressed in the proper forum, where the rules distinguish facts from fiction.’
The bombshell report comes as the Department of Justice is gearing up to bring a criminal indictment against him as his accusers have been told they could be brought to testify in New York City.
