Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs movies do not often come with out sound however none was wanted on the CCTV footage that confirmed him with a towel wrapped round his waist operating down a resort hall and mounting a brutal assault on a younger lady desperately making an attempt to get away from him.
The rap star and music mogul ran as much as his then girlfriend, Cassie Ventura, who was placing on her footwear as she waited for the elevate after fleeing his resort suite.
Grabbing her by the again of the top, he threw her to the ground after which kicked her viciously as she lay immobile.
He furiously delivered one other onerous kick earlier than dragging her again alongside the hall ground in direction of his room. The video additionally exhibits him throwing a glass vase in her path.
The surprising CCTV footage exhibits Sean Combs chase after Cassie Ventura and seize her
He throws her to the bottom after grabbing her by the again of the top
When she falls to the ground her viciously kicks her
The harrowing footage publicly emerged little greater than per week earlier than it was revealed right now that federal investigators are getting ready to deliver Combs’ accusers earlier than a grand jury.
In what can be a major escalation of efforts to prosecute the star, potential witnesses have been advised they could be dropped at testify in entrance of a federal grand jury in New York, sources advised CNN.
The safety video of the assault on Ventura, captured on a number of cameras, was recorded on the Intercontinental Lodge in Century Metropolis, Los Angeles, in March 2016. Two days later the couple have been photographed holding fingers on the pink carpet for the premiere of The Excellent Match, a romantic comedy through which Ventura starred.
The video which emerged solely per week in the past after being obtained by CNN corroborates a number of the allegations made towards Combs in a surprising lawsuit that Ventura filed final November.
She claimed that in greater than 10 years of bodily abuse, sexual slavery and rape, she’d been subjected to ‘savage’ beatings from a extremely jealous man ‘liable to uncontrollable rage’.
The lawsuit was settled by each events the next day for an undisclosed quantity with Combs — estimated to be price $1billion (£790million) — admitting no wrongdoing.
Within the go well with, the actress and R&B singer, who Combs had signed to his Unhealthy Boy document label, accused the flamboyant star of taking up her life after they met in 2005 when she was making an attempt to make it in showbusiness and he was already one of many greatest stars within the music business. She was 19 on the time; he was 37.
Ventura described a sample of management and abuse that included Combs plying her with onerous medication, beating her so badly she must keep holed up in resort rooms for days and forcing her to have intercourse with male prostitutes whereas he watched and masturbated – twisted sexual encounters he referred to as ‘freak-offs’.
In what seems to have been a reference to the incident coated by the CCTV footage, Ventura mentioned he’d attacked her in a resort hall after one such freak-off throughout which he ‘turned extraordinarily intoxicated’ and punched her within the face, giving her a black eye.
Ventura mentioned she waited till he was asleep to go away the resort room however he awoke and adopted her, screaming.
‘He grabbed at her after which took glass vases within the hallways and threw them at her, inflicting glass to crash round them as she ran to the elevator to flee,’ mentioned her legal professionals, who additionally claimed Combs – whose stage names have included ‘Puff Daddy’ and ‘P Diddy’ – had paid the resort £40,000 for the CCTV footage of him attacking her.
Observers have lengthy been stunned that, in contrast to Hollywood, the music enterprise has been spared a serious MeToo second that may act as a belated reckoning for an business that has lengthy tolerated sexual predators.
That oversight seems to have been lastly addressed in latest days because the gilded however sordid world of a rap famous person has come crashing down round his diamond-bejewelled ears.
The pair seem on the pink carpet in LA simply two days after the assault was caught on CCTV
And simply as with movie mogul Harvey Weinstein and his disgusting assaults on ladies which turbocharged the unique MeToo motion in 2017, it seems that Combs’ monstrous mood and abusive behaviour has been an open secret within the music world for years.
Final Sunday, two days after CNN aired the resort footage and regardless of police claims that it’s too late to cost him over the incident, Combs issued a video assertion through which he apologised for the assault.
‘It is so tough to mirror on the darkest instances in your life however typically you bought to do this. I used to be f***ed up. I imply, I hit all-time low however I make no excuses,’ he mentioned, shaking his head in obvious deep remorse. ‘My behaviour on that video is inexcusable.’
He went on: ‘I used to be disgusted then once I did it. I am disgusted now,’ added the person, who till that second had ‘vehemently’ denied ever assaulting Ventura.
‘I went and I sought out skilled assist. I bought into going to remedy and going to rehab,’ he assured viewers. ‘I needed to ask God for his mercy and style. I am so sorry. However I am dedicated to being a greater man each day. I am not asking for forgiveness. I am actually sorry.’
It was a pathetic, grovelling plea for mercy from a star whose public picture has all the time been one in all glowering defiance — and this time no one was satisfied.
Combs, 54, had beforehand not solely denied Ventura’s assault allegations however vindictively insisted that she and different accusers have been simply searching for a pay-off.
On Thursday, she urged folks to ‘open your coronary heart to imagine victims the primary time’, saying that home violence ‘broke me right down to somebody I by no means thought I might grow to be’.
Ventura’s camp was fast to level out the obvious weak point of Combs’ video mea culpa. ‘Combs’ most up-to-date assertion is extra about himself than the many individuals he has damage,’ mentioned her lawyer in an announcement.
‘When Cassie and a number of different ladies got here ahead, he denied every part and steered that his victims have been searching for a payday. That he was solely compelled to “apologise” as soon as his repeated denials have been confirmed false exhibits his pathetic desperation, and nobody can be swayed by his disingenuous phrases.’
And nor certainly have they been. 4 months after Ventura made her allegations, federal brokers and police carried out dramatic raids on Combs’ houses in Miami and Los Angeles as a part of a sex-trafficking investigation based mostly on recent claims from three ladies and one man.
Harvey Weinstein’s disgusting assaults on ladies turbocharged the MeToo motion in 2017
One month on from these raids, superstar help for Combs has lastly dried up and but extra ladies are going public with tales of abuse.
Dressmaker Misa Hylton, who was in a relationship with Combs within the early Nineteen Nineties and has a baby by him, mentioned the video of him attacking Ventura ‘triggered my very own trauma’.
Though she has by no means straight accused him of abusing her, she appeared to trace at it in a social media publish directed at him final 12 months: ‘Everybody has to sit down round for years and act like there is not something mistaken with you. That is the place the buck stops for me.’
Bishop T.D. Jakes, a megachurch preacher in Dallas, who was reportedly a longtime non secular mentor to Combs, final Sunday issued a public denunciation — with out naming him — from the pulpit.
Addressing the resort assault video, he thundered to his 17,000 congregants: ‘Once I noticed the photographs which were floating everywhere in the information all week, it turned tough to observe. The atrocious, degrading, demeaning debauchery.
‘I do know who it was, however as a person, I noticed my daughters. And it made me indignant.’
Jennifer Lopez, who was in a relationship with Combs from 1999 to 2001, had been left ‘disturbed’ and ‘heartbroken’ by the resort video, mentioned an insider. ‘She is conscious and has seen what Diddy did and is tremendously dissatisfied.’
Indira Milini Khan, daughter of singer Chaka Khan, additionally attacked Combs, claiming her mom had additionally as soon as been the sufferer of his explosive mood — ‘yelling and screaming like a lunatic’ — and that Diddy’s safety guards had attacked her 19-year-old brother when he intervened.
The hip hop world is stuffed with fierce rivalries and one in all Combs’ outdated sparring companions, Curtis ’50 Cent’ Jackson, whose manufacturing firm has made a documentary sequence in regards to the allegations towards Diddy, this week rapidly agreed a take care of Netflix.
Jackson has already leaked an excerpt from the sequence through which a rapper named Mark Curry discusses partying with Combs as he allegedly spiked bottles of champagne with ‘one thing to make the ladies actual, actual slippery’.
Dressmaker Misa Hylton, who was in a relationship with Combs within the early Nineteen Nineties and has a baby by him, mentioned his assault on Ventura ‘triggered my very own trauma’. Pictured in 2019
Huge manufacturers and politicians are additionally distancing themselves from Combs, a extremely profitable businessman who launched profitable ventures in trend, meals and tv, in addition to producing music for a raft of different performers.
The uber-narcissistic star has by no means shied away from conspicuous consumption. Other than buying a £36million yacht, he as soon as blew £5.4million on a diamond necklace and splashed out almost £330,000 on Krug champagne for a single get together.
The seemingly visitor checklist for such celebrations has all of the sudden grow to be a lot, a lot smaller. New York mayor Eric Adams, who gave native boy Combs the ‘key to the town’ solely final 12 months, admitted that he was now contemplating revoking the honour.
Health firm Peloton has banned Combs’ music from its exercise playlists whereas the web streaming of his songs as ‘Diddy’ has plunged by greater than half in 5 months.
On Tuesday, Crystal McKinney, a former mannequin, compounded his already critical authorized woes when she claimed in a brand new lawsuit that Combs ‘drugged and sexually assaulted’ her in 2003. McKinney, who was then 22, mentioned they met at a trend occasion in New York and he invited her again to his studio.
She mentioned Combs and several other buddies started smoking hashish there and she or he was inspired to have a puff. It was ‘very highly effective’, her go well with claims, and she or he believes it could have been laced with one other drug.
Former mannequin Crystal McKinney has alleged the rapper drugged and sexually assaulted her in his studio in 2003. She claims nonetheless have the unwashed garments she wore on the night time
Combs then allegedly ordered her to comply with him into a toilet the place he pressured himself on her and, regardless of her resistance, made her have oral intercourse. She says she later misplaced consciousness and awoke in a taxi the place she realised she had been sexually assaulted.
McKinney mentioned that her modelling alternatives started to dry up following the incident and she or he believes Combs used his affect to ‘blackball’ her within the business. Plunging right into a ‘tailspin of tension and despair’, she says she tried suicide in or round 2004.
She mentioned she was submitting her lawsuit now to hunt ‘justice for herself and for another of Combs’ victims’. Her lawsuit claims she nonetheless has the unwashed garments she wore on the night time of her ordeal in a sealed plastic bag.
Then, on Thursday, a seventh accuser – April Lampros – filed court docket papers in New York accusing Combs of sexually assaulting her 4 instances after she met him in 1994 when she was a trend pupil.
She says one assault occurred after he had pressured her to take Ecstasy and that, when she tried to distance herself from him, threatened her with violence and ruining her trend ambitions.
Hers is the sixth lawsuit to be introduced towards Combs since Ventura sued him final November. Three different ladies have accused him of sexual assault and rape, one saying he later beat her up and one other saying the rapper and two different males gang raped her in 2003 when she was solely 17.
Joi Dickerson, one of many three ladies, says he drugged and raped her in 1991, filming the assault when she was a 19-year-old pupil. Among the lawsuits have been filed beneath the New York Grownup Survivors Act, which created a one-year window – which ran till November final 12 months – for grownup victims to file fits towards alleged abusers whatever the statute of limitations.
Nevertheless, the accusations have not simply come from ladies. In February, music producer Rodney ‘Lil Rod’ Jones claimed Combs made undesirable sexual advances in direction of him, too.
In a £24million lawsuit, he mentioned Combs assaulted him and subjected him to ‘fixed’ sexual harassment and groping, strolling round bare in entrance of him and touching his genitals.
Jones additional alleges that, over a 12 months, Combs plied him with medication, threatened him and compelled him to rent prostitutes and have intercourse with them throughout wild home events for the star’s voyeuristic pleasure.
In addition to prostitutes, Jones claims that underage ladies have been on the events and that he watched Combs spike their drinks. He additionally claims he has a whole lot of hours of movies documenting ‘critical criminal activity’ by Combs and his employees and company.
One accuser in contrast Combs to paedophile intercourse trafficker Jeffrey Epstein (pictured)
In keeping with Jones, who in contrast the star to paedophile intercourse trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, Combs put in a whole lot of hidden cameras in his numerous houses to document folks having intercourse.
Jones additionally alleged that individuals have been drawn to attending Combs’ lavish events due to his ‘entry to celebrities akin to well-known athletes, political figures, artists, musicians and worldwide dignitaries like British Royal, Prince Harry’.
His lawsuit doesn’t mean any wrongdoing by the celebrities or the prince, who’s believed to have solely met Combs as soon as backstage on the 2007 Live performance for Diana at Wembley Stadium in London. However these nebulous connections, says Jones, gave Combs ‘legitimacy’.
Previous to his admission of the assault on Ventura, Combs had denied all wrongdoing and has not been charged with any crime.
NBC Information has estimated that Combs has confronted authorized motion or settlement payouts greater than 4 dozen instances over his 40-year profession. Half a dozen of these involved allegations of violence however he has not often confronted legal fees.
That would all be about to vary, nonetheless. Authorized specialists level out that Combs’ earlier strenuous denials of abusing Cassie Ventura have been more likely to trigger him vital issues as they undermine the credibility of his testimony with regards to his different accusers.
Whereas he can’t face legal fees for kicking hell out of Ventura because the offence passed off too way back, that resort video might but end him.
Receiving a prestigious music award in 2022, Combs gave Ventura a ‘particular shoutout’ as somebody who would ‘maintain me down at nighttime instances’. Even darker instances absolutely await him now.
