Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - Disturbing Claims In Dancer's Suit Claiming Diddy Trafficked Her at 'White Parties'

Starting point is 00:00:00 Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this Law & Crimes series ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. She was sex trafficked in New York, in the Hamptons, and then in Miami. A former adult entertainer is one of a dozen people suing Sean Diddy Combs, claiming she was sex trafficked at the mogul's famous white parties. Now she's planning to file a police report. I'm taking a closer look at Adria English's claims.

Starting point is 00:00:29 Welcome to Crime Fix. I'm Anjanette Levy. Adria English says she worked at Sean Combs' white parties for five years. She says at first it seemed like a really good gig. English, like all of the people who have accused Combs of sexual misconduct, didn't come forward for years. English's suit says Combs' ex-girlfriend, Cassie Ventura, filing a lawsuit last November detailing years of sexual and physical abuse at the hands of Sean Combs,

Starting point is 00:00:55 gave her the courage to come forward. Cassie's lawsuit really opened the floodgates for other lawsuits. After her suit, a number of accusers came forward, a flurry, really. Nearly a dozen women have accused Combs of sexual assault, and a man, record producer Rodney Little Rod Jones, is also suing Combs. Sean Combs has denied all of those allegations, I want to be clear. Adria English filed her lawsuit against Combs in July. She's also suing Jacob Ereboff, known as Jacob the Jeweler, and a woman named Tamiko Thomas, who was a friend of Sean Combs. English calls Thomas Sean Combs' Ghislaine Maxwell, and she claims she was paid $1,000 to perform a sex act on Ereboff.

Starting point is 00:01:39 English says the first time she worked for Combs was at a 2004 Labor Day white party. The suit says plaintiff can support her allegations within this complaint and has lived her adult life with the memories of being trapped in a cycle of sex trafficking she never asked to be a part of and was chosen because defendant Combs knew he could groom her. For years, plaintiff has been affected by defendant's actions and has suffered extreme emotional distress, impacting nearly every aspect of plaintiff's life and personal relationships. Given all the brave individuals who have come forward against defendant Combs, plaintiff is doing the same. English says in her suit, she worked in adult films as a teen, but then moved to New York

Starting point is 00:02:20 and worked as a go-go dancer. She says her boyfriend, Anthony Gallo, was auditioning for a modeling job with Combs Clothing Line and that he refused to perform oral sex on Combs to get the job. In an effort to assist Mr. Gallo's desire to become a model, plaintiff agreed to what she believed to be legitimate employment with defendant Combs and Bad Boy Entertainment as entertainment at the white parties in the Hamptons, New York, and Miami, Florida from 2004 to 2009. Plaintiff did not agree to a lifetime of aftermath of being used as a sexual pawn for the pleasure and financial benefit of others. English is also suing Vibe Magazine, claiming her image at the party was used in the magazine and she was identified as a guest. She includes a photo of

Starting point is 00:03:05 that image and she says the outfit that she is wearing is what she was told to wear. It was kind of a uniform. The suit continues. Plaintiff was encouraged directly by defendant Thomas to provide lap dances and be sexually flirtatious with the guests at the white party. Then English says plaintiff was also instructed and directed by defendant Combs as to which guests plaintiffs should focus attention and interaction with to ensure his guests were having a great time. English says she and others were given a separate break room to work in because they were employees, but there were other things that were separate from the guests, including champagne bottles. Plaintiff was strictly instructed by the defendant, Combs and Thomas, on which bottles of alcohol and champagne

Starting point is 00:03:50 female employees were to exclusively drink from and also required plaintiff to take narcotics offered by a white party guest. English says she was forced to take these drugs. The suit continues, upon information and belief, defendant Combs laced the liquor with ecstasy, which is why plaintiff was provided strict rules on which bottles to consume from. The suit goes on, despite being forced to drink copious amounts of alcohol and consume illicit narcotics, the encounters plaintiff was forced to endure were so excruciating that plaintiff remembers them as they still haunt her to this day. Now, I mentioned earlier that English said in 2004, this seemed like a good job.

Starting point is 00:04:32 She enjoyed working at that first party, but she claims that things escalated and got worse at future parties. The suit says plaintiff began engaging in vaginal sexual intercourse with guests as they had learned about her past in adult entertainment and used it forcefully to coerce plaintiff into sex work for the benefit of defendant Thomas and Combs and their beneficiaries. English claims she later worked at white parties in Miami, as well as parties in the Hamptons in New York, and that her uniform for the parties suddenly changed. During the white party, plaintiff was provided a black dress to wear by defendant Thomas and Combs when previously plaintiff was provided white clothing like other guests and the theme of the party.

Starting point is 00:05:17 Upon information and belief, plaintiff believes she was required to wear a black dress to the white party to denote her capacity there as an employee, but more sinisterly as a sex trafficked sex worker. Now we've heard in the criminal case filed against Sean Combs, and to be clear, he maintains his innocence in that case and has pleaded not guilty, that he had an elaborate video recording system in his home. Adria English believes she may have been recorded. Upon information and belief, defendant Doze, who were individuals defendants Thomas and Combs passed off plaintiff to be sexually assaulted, were filmed by defendant Combs' security cameras

Starting point is 00:05:55 sexually assaulting plaintiff while plaintiff is unconscious during the white parties in both New York and Florida. English also says she endured threats from Sean Combs. Defendant Combs is very forceful, demanding, and does not take no for an answer and would often threaten to inflict bodily harm and or terminate plaintiff or her then-boyfriend's Mr. Gallo employment and blackball them from the industry if plaintiff did not comply with his demands. As Defendant Combs acted and was viewed in such a way to where Mr. Gallo and plaintiff believed he had the power where defendant Combs' threats were credible.

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Starting point is 00:07:17 eight clicks or less. You don't even have to leave your couch and there is no fee. You only pay Morgan & Morgan if you win. So if you are injured, you can easily start a claim at ForThePeople.com slash YouTube Takeover. Now, English says she was in a girl band and thought she would have success, but that Combs sabotaged it. Upon information and belief, this is what the suit says, in retaliation for plaintiff's escape, defendant Combs had plaintiff's then-boyfriend, Mr. Gallo, blackballed from the modeling industry and had all of Mr. Gallo's campaigns with Sean John removed. She added, upon information and belief, in retaliation for plaintiff's escape, Defendant Combs had plaintiff blackballed from the entertainment industry.

Starting point is 00:08:02 Now, I spoke with English's attorney, Ariel Mitchell Kidd, about the lawsuit back in July. So in the lawsuit, we pretty much spell out the details of the sex trafficking my client faced at the hands of Mr. Combs at his white parties. So she was essentially sought after due to her relationship with her boyfriend who was interviewing, or I should say auditioning with Mr. Combs for his Sean John campaign. That's essentially how things came about. And initially she was just approached to be a go-go dancer. It was all very above board initially. And then eventually with more time, it turned into being sex traffic. She was sex trafficked in New York, in the

Starting point is 00:08:46 Hamptons, and then in Miami. And these were all during Mr. Combs' white parties that he was throwing. So we essentially outlined the details of that sex trafficking in her lawsuit. And the reason she came forward now, as you know, a lot of people used to be terrified of Mr. Combs. He's blackballed several people, including my client and her then boyfriend, Mr. Gallo, from the industry. So as we all know, there are strengths with numbers. So once Ms. Ventura came forward, my client had been looking for an attorney for some time prior to finding me to also file a lawsuit because she had been a victim as well. Adria English filed a police report with the Miami-Dade police alleging sex trafficking. That's been passed along to the feds, according to TMZ. Now she's planning

Starting point is 00:09:39 to file another police report in the Hamptons. One of Sean Combs' lawyers, Jonathan Davis, has said in a statement previously, no matter how many lawsuits are filed, it won't change the fact that Mr. Combs has never sexually assaulted or sex trafficked anyone. Krista Ramey represents sexual assault survivors. So Krista, I want to get your gut reaction on reading Adria English's lawsuit. This lawsuit was particularly disturbing. And it's interesting because it differs from some of the others. It seems a little bit like consensual agreements at first when you're reading it,

Starting point is 00:10:15 that she went into this and there's even language about there was an offer and she accepted it for employment with Sean Combs. But as you think about it and as you get deeper into it, you realize that this was not that. This is exactly what sex trafficking is about. And it's about that power and control that individuals have over others' bodies and their autonomy and their ability to say no, quite honestly. She was put into a position where she could not say no to what was happening to her, because if she did, she feared the consequences. And so it's the definition when you look at the human sex trafficking laws, it's the fraud, the force does not have to be

Starting point is 00:10:59 physical violence. And this is what you saw within her complaint. Now, this is a civil lawsuit, of course. And, you know, she is she is claiming she was sex trafficked. It all started off like a good job and she was trying to help her boyfriend. And then things escalated. She said she was groomed to perform this sex work. She includes these photographs in the lawsuit as well. And she she actually looks, you know, she's smiling. She's happy. It appears she's happy in these photographs. You know, I'm assuming she's providing these photographs as documentary evidence, because this could be hard to prove in some respects, I assume, unless unless there are recordings that she believes exists. Yeah, I think that a lot of these victims now realize that maybe that is a potential out there, that the federal government has seized recordings and maybe hers are among those.

Starting point is 00:11:53 She can't rely on that, though. And so I think you're right. And this is what happens when you see a lot of photo evidence put into a complaint. It's being done to give credibility because what is happening with a lot of these victims that are coming forward under these revival statutes or these look back statutes where you're allowed to file a lawsuit when your lawsuit would have otherwise not been able to be filed. A lot of people look at them with very, like they're very dubious. They're probably just trying to get money because they have this opportunity now.

Starting point is 00:12:28 Maybe they knew this person way back when and they can claim that they were there. And so a lot of skeptical people and these potential jurors even look at these claims with a great deal of skepticism. And so when you put those kinds of photos within a complaint, it helps give credibility to it. I think when you're drafting it. I also think that when you seek complaints with this level of detail, that lawyers have receipts. And what I mean by that is that a lawyer is not going to risk their reputation just because they believe a story that's coming out of a victim's mouth. They're going to want to have some sort of proof or evidence. And I deal with this all the time. And when you have someone come to you without anything, then there's really not much you can do because you still do have a burden of proof.

Starting point is 00:13:15 It's lower than criminal, but you still have a burden of proof. Let's say these things did happen because Sean Combs is saying, I never sex trafficked anyone. He's saying that through his attorneys, both his civil attorney and his criminal attorney. He's claiming he has committed no crimes. He hasn't sex trafficked anyone. The whole line coming out of at least the criminal defense team is that this was consensual. I could see in a civil case saying, well, look, if she's at this white party and she happens to be on tape doing X, Y and Z performing a sex act, she did that on her own accord. And she's citing this instant with the instance with this Jacob, the jeweler, in which she says she was given a thousand dollars to do something.

Starting point is 00:13:59 You know, she did this on her own accord? Like how hard would it be to fight back against that as, you know, the plaintiff in the case, if you're saying, well, yeah, I might've had, you know, a sexual engagement with her, but she was on board with it. So when you look at the human sex trafficking laws, the federal law that's written in, and then many states have their own laws. You're not looking at just force like gun to head or drugged unwillingly. It doesn't need to be that kind of force. And it can be through fraud, coercion, some kind of other trickery going on. She had bait. The bait was, we're going to give your boyfriend work as a model. We're going to help you in the music industry. We're going to set you up the music industry. We're going to set

Starting point is 00:14:45 you up with a girl band. You know, I think that Sean Combs had a TV show then about making the band or something. And so she did have a band. She said she had a music group that she was trying to be successful with. And so he's making these introductions for her. He's doing these things. He's coercing her into it. And that is where this comes into play. When you think about human sex trafficking, I think that we have to get the idea out of our head that we had in the past when it comes to sex work and that sex work is voluntary work that people enter into freely and of their own accord. It's a little bit more complex than that.

Starting point is 00:15:22 And once you become kind of controlled by someone else, they become your pimp, essentially. Then that control is that coercion and fraud necessary for the elements of the human sex trafficking allegations. So, yes, she did enter this into initially voluntarily. She was paid. Yes. But did she have a choice is what the ultimate question that a jury is going to have to decide. She has filed a police report both in Miami-Dade and now she's planning to file one in the Hamptons in New York.

Starting point is 00:15:54 And she's filing this saying, you know, a crime. She's claiming a crime was committed against her. So what do you believe is, does that help her, do you believe? And we know that from the reporting from TMZ that the Miami-Dade Police Department has passed along the information she reported to the federal authorities. And I assume that whatever happens in the Hamptons, they will do the same. So does that bolster her civil case? Well, it can lend credibility to it if ultimately, you know, we were talking a little bit earlier about the videos that may exist out there. You know, the feds have already like obviously seized evidence from both his homes in Miami and here in Los Angeles. And so, yes, if there is connections at the federal, you know, that the federal investigation could connect with her.

Starting point is 00:16:47 Ultimately, of course, it's going to leg credibility. If they find evidence of videos with her where she looks unconscious or maybe not as coherent as she should be at these parties, it might lend credence to the fact that she was being drugged and kind of substantiate some of the allegations in her complaint. And so that is helpful. They're going to investigate this. The evidence is so significant against Sean Combs right now. They're going to look to see if she's another one of the complaining witnesses that potentially exists out there that will help bolster the charges that are already pending now for which Sean Combs is now incarcerated for in New York and in the

Starting point is 00:17:25 Southern District. So I think that it all will be connected ultimately with each of these lawsuits that have been filed, not just hers. Her lawyer told the New York Post that she she looks forward to testifying in front of a jury in this case, as far as the federal case goes. She hadn't been called to testify in front of the grand jury in the case. But does that lead you to believe possibly that they have reached out, the federal prosecutors have, to basically have her come testify potentially in the trial? Potentially. I think that's also a way of the lawyer just saying that my client wants to tell her story. I can tell you that no sex abuse survivor looks forward to testifying to anything. Most of the time, they're very reluctant to talk about it. And that's why it takes them so long

Starting point is 00:18:16 to tell their story beyond maybe one or two really close confidence they hold with other people that are really close to them that they know won't betray their trust. So when a lawyer says that, oftentimes it's, they're signaling to the outside world that, you know, she can and will do this. Don't think that she can be shut down or that she's afraid that she's not, she's brave and she can handle it. And, you know, we don't want our, we don't want to make our clients feel that they're not capable of doing that. So I think that that, two things. I think that that's the lawyer signaling that she has a story to tell and she's ready to

Starting point is 00:18:53 tell it. And so if the federal government hasn't already reached out to her, she's saying, please come talk to me. Thank you. Yeah. And when you think about this, that defense attorney has been saying one victim, but the prosecutor said, no, there's multiple victims that are discussed in this complaint. One victim's story was highlighted. There's only 14 pages to this indictment. It's very thin, really, when you think about it. It doesn't have a lot of factual allegations in it. It's very short. Most of the civil complaints we've seen, like this one that we were talking about today, was like 114 pages. So a lot of these complaints are very thick and rich with information.

Starting point is 00:20:00 The federal one isn't. I think we're going to see superseding indictments. And I think we're going to see other defendants named, not just Sean Combs being the only defendant. I think that it's not going to be as complex as what we see, like for instance, down in Georgia with the Young Thug trial with the, you know, how many defendants do we have there? But it's not going to be as simple as the R. Kelly case where it's just one defendant. I think that there's going to be others that are closely tied to Sean Combs and that really helps this criminal enterprise that he had going. I think it's going to be a big snowball. I think it's going to really rock the music industry to its core, very similarly to what was done with Harvey Weinstein. Really interesting. Well, thank you so much, Krista Ramey. I appreciate you coming on.

Starting point is 00:20:44 Thank you so much, Krista Ramey. I appreciate you coming on. Thank you so much. And that's it for this episode of Crime Fix. I'm Ann Jeanette Levy. Thanks so much for being with me. I'll see you back here next time.

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Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - Disturbing Claims In Dancer's Suit Claiming Diddy Trafficked Her at 'White Parties'

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Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - Disturbing Claims In Dancer's Suit Claiming Diddy Trafficked Her at 'White Parties'

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