Law&Crime Sidebar - P. Diddy Accused of Sexually Assaulting 25 Minors in Disturbing New Allegations

Starting point is 00:00:00 Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this Law and Crimes series ad-free right now. Join Wondry Plus in the Wondery app Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Agent Nate Russo returns in Oracle 3, Murder at the Grandview, the latest installment of the gripping Audible Original series. When a reunion at an abandoned island hotel turns deadly, Russo must untangle accident from murder. But beware, something sinister lurks in the grand. views shadows. Joshua Jackson delivers a bone-chilling performance in this supernatural thriller that

Starting point is 00:00:35 will keep you on the edge of your seat. Don't let your fears take hold of you as you dive into this addictive series. Love thrillers with a paranormal twist? The entire Oracle trilogy is available on Audible. Listen now on Audible. The biggest secret in the entertainment industry that really wasn't a secret at all has finally been revealed to the world. A law firm in Texas says thousands of people have come to them making allegations against Sean Diddy Combs with claims dating back to the 1990s. And this time, the shocking new accusations include alleged victims who say they were minors at the time. We're going to dig into these claims and how it might impact Combs criminal case. Welcome to Sidebar, presented by law and crime. I'm Jesse Weber.

Starting point is 00:01:24 A well-known Texas lawyer announced to a crowd of reporters on two, that his law firm plans to pursue legal action against music mogul Sean Diddy Combs on behalf of more than 100 victims, more than two dozen of those future plaintiffs say they were just kids when Combs allegedly assaulted them. We're talking about Turney Tony Busby, and it's not just Combs that he says is caught in the crosshairs. The wall of silence has now been broken and victims are coming forward. Our team has had at this point, more than 3,285 individuals contact us with people claiming to have been victimized by Sean Combs. We now represent 120 individuals who intend to bring civil claims in civil court against Sean Diddy Combs, as well as claims against many other individuals and entities that we will name as defendants as well. we file these individual cases. I expect that through this process,

Starting point is 00:02:31 many powerful people will be exposed. Many dirty secrets will be revealed. We know what we are potentially up against. This is always the case in situations like this when a celebrity is involved. People can be downright mean and nasty. You be shocked at the length fans will go, no matter the evidence, to the contrary,

Starting point is 00:02:52 to defend celebrities they love. And there's a reason for this word fans. They're fanatics. I've personally already been threatened multiple times on social media. And when I agreed to pursue this, I expected as much. This isn't my first rodeo. But victims who step forward to have their voices heard should not be subjected to that kind of conduct. They should not be targeted.

Starting point is 00:03:15 According to Busby, more than 3,000 people have contacted his office so far with stories about Combs, who, by the way, is currently incarcerated in Brooklyn, New York on federal charges of racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking, transportation to engage in prostitution. Combs was arrested September 16th pursuant to a grand jury indictment. His arrest came after a raid by federal investigators on his two homes, one in Miami, one in Los Angeles back in March. Combs has also been subject to a litany of civil suits already, which really got rolling last fall when his ex, Cassandra Ventura, made shocking allegations about her relationship with Combs. Cassie claimed that Combs was abusive for nearly the entirety of their 10-year relationship.

Starting point is 00:03:57 She also claimed he forced her to participate in the now infamous sex parties known as freak-offs or F-O's when commercial sex workers would be brought in to have sex with Cassie and others while the participants were allegedly under the influence of drugs. Those freak-off allegations, by the way, are also at the heart of the prosecution's case as well. And prosecutors claim that Combs recorded these sex sessions, both for his own pleasure and seemingly as potential blackmail. So to hear a hundred more lawsuits raises a lot of interesting questions in terms of the timing and its relation to the criminal case. So clearly I'm going to be very busy when all of these lawsuits drop, but the good news is I have something now that I use that has made my

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Starting point is 00:05:19 25 cents back on every gallon on your first tank of gas. A little bit of back. A little bit of background about the man making these very serious allegations, attorney Tony Busby. Now, you may recognize him. You may recognize that name. He has represented multiple women who claim that football star Deshawn Watson, who now plays for the Cleveland Browns, sexually assaulted them. In fact, he just filed a new lawsuit a few weeks ago on behalf of a woman who claims that Watson assaulted her back in 2020. Now, Watson, to be clear, hasn't been criminally charged. Two different grand juries decided not to indemnity. indict him. Busby filed this new lawsuit after months-long negotiations with Watson's legal

Starting point is 00:05:58 team apparently went nowhere. The NFL says it's doing its own investigation under its personal conduct policy. But going back to Sean Combs, that's who's now in Busby's sights. Now, from the more than 3,000 alleged claims made, that has been whittled down to 120 people who are moving forward with their lawsuits, according to Busby. Now, in response to Busby's news conference, Erica Wolfe, an attorney for Sean Combs, released the following statement. Mr. Combs emphatically and categorically denies as false and defamatory any claim that he sexually abused anyone, including minors. He looks forward to proving his innocence and vindicating himself in court where the truth will be established based on evidence, not speculation.

Starting point is 00:06:42 But Busby told reporters that the future plaintiffs have, quote, legitimacy and merit, thanks to corroborating evidence and witnesses. In fact, a former detective from the Houston Police Department has joined his firm to help vet people and their accounts. Busby says that some have already even spoken with the FBI in connection with that agency's investigation into Sean Combs, and Busby says they're sharing all information that they come across. The allegations against Combs run the gamut from sexual assault and rape to false imprisonment to prostitution, and of the 120 individual plaintiffs that Busby plans to represent, he says 25. of them were minors when they say they were attacked.

Starting point is 00:07:25 You should know, in this group, it is evenly divided between males and females. There are 60 males and 60 females who have joined us to pursue these claims as plaintiffs. In this group, 62% of American, 30% are white, and the remainder are Hispanic or Asian. The victims are from more than 25 states. The majority are from California, New York, Georgia, and Florida. Her youngest victim at the time of the occurrence was nine years old. We have an individual who was 14 years old. We have one who was 15.

Starting point is 00:08:08 25 of the 120 individuals who are plaintiffs in these cases were minors at the time of the acts complained of. Most of these events and incidents occurred at parties, typically after parties, our album release parties, New Year's Eve parties, Fourth of July parties, something they called a puppy party, all white party, although several of these events occurred at auditions. Many times, especially young people, people wanting to break into the industry were coerced into this type of conduct in the promise of being made a star or in the promise of having Sean Combs listen to their tape

Starting point is 00:08:52 or even let them read for Sean Combs. Nine years old. To talk about this, I want to bring in trial attorney, Krista Ramey, who has worked closely with child victims of sexual abuse. Krista, good to see you. Thanks for coming on. First, I want to talk about the timing of this. Comes out after the indictment after the arrest.

Starting point is 00:09:10 What do you make of the timing? I think the timing is about perfect. So a lot of, you know, a lot of people don't come forward right away for a number of reasons. And when you, when you do this in this manner after the publicity that the indictment and the arrest have received, a lot of these survivors, this is really kind of top of mind for them right now. And so having, you know, having this happen right now, it's kind of allowing them that safety, really. And having people that have kind of tried to push this away to think about maybe I should help others. And so I think that's really kind of, you know, some of the, you know, more significant parts of why you do this now. Does it hurt them, though, in the sense that defense attorneys could say, you had all this time to come forward, you only come out after all the lawsuits, you only come out after Sean Combs has been criminally indicted.

Starting point is 00:10:00 It would hurt their credibility in a way. Or no, is that something they would be able to fight against? No. And a lot of, a lot of states have what's called like rape shield laws that actually protect. that sort of evidence to be used against a survivor of sexual abuse or sexual assault. So really, no, that can't be used that way. In the past, that's what was done. Typically, you would take that sort of evidence of, you know, you're just coming forward now. It's all about the money. And so that's why you're doing this now.

Starting point is 00:10:30 No, this is really not how, you know, trauma, survivors, like reconcile what happened to them and how they'd push forward with life after being so dramatically abused as some of these people it sounds like that they were. They have to they have to come to terms of a lot of things themselves and to be able to just live and breathe and move about in the world. The last thing that they're thinking about is confronting someone as powerful and as significant in terms of their influence as Sean Combs. No, that's a that's a very fair argument. Here's the thing that I wanted to ask you about. Look, I've said it several times over the past few weeks that based on prior allegations made in lawsuits against Combs, given what we're just hearing now,

Starting point is 00:11:12 I was surprised that there weren't any federal charges related to children in his indictment. Several of the lawsuits that Combs faces in civil court mentioned misconduct with minors. I'm asking you now, as we're hearing, what, 25 plaintiffs might come forward that they were abused as children. Does that chip away at the legitimacy of these claims regarding the minors, meaning the feds looked into it? They didn't find anything. Maybe they didn't find the claims were credible. Is it that the feds weren't aware of these claims yet and now might be looking into it? Or is there another reason for why Combs was in charge with respect to minors?

Starting point is 00:11:54 So that evidence still might be being collected. There could be a grand jury could still be sitting and collecting evidence and investigating this right now. There could be superseding indictments that come about. I think that we can't really make any assumptions based upon the indictment that we currently have. I think that, you know, the credibility of those claims, you know, a criminal case and a civil case, as you know, are very different in terms of burden of proof. In a criminal case, you have the higher standard of beyond a reasonable doubt. On the other hand, on the civil case, you have just preponderance of the evidence, which is, you know, just more likely true than not true.

Starting point is 00:12:31 If you believe one side a little bit more than the other, then that side wins. So I think that there's also that. And with minor claims, they're particularly tricky because minors' memories are not as good. And when you're talking about adding, you know, being drugged potentially to the mix, that could even make it more complicated in terms of proving these minors' claims. And, you know, something that I encounter frequently in my practice is that sometimes minors will just say, I don't know if they just don't want to talk about something. They have very distinct ways of protecting themselves.

Starting point is 00:13:03 So it's a lot more difficult to work with minors and takes a little bit longer. to build those cases. So I wouldn't say we're going to rule that out that there might not be charges with minors. But right now, that's just what we're working with. No, 100% he could be hit with a superseding indictment. But you would imagine that after investigating him for quite some time, if these allegations are true, why he wouldn't be hit with a charge related to minors because I'll tell you one thing, while his defense team is saying currently that their defense will be everything was consensual, including these freakoff sessions, when you involve a minor, consent is thrown out the window.

Starting point is 00:13:38 Now, when it comes to how Combs was allegedly able to hurt so many people, and you mentioned that, allegedly it was through the use of drugs. This is according to Busby. He says that victims recounted stories of being at parties, being told that they had to drink this drink that was handed to them. And if they didn't, they were kicked out. Busby alleges that once a victim was unconscious, Combs and others would rape that person. Busby also says that 55% of the victims reported the alleged assaults to police or hospital staff,

Starting point is 00:14:05 but says they weren't believed and further action wasn't taken. Krista, if that's true, what does that tell you? That's heartbreaking, isn't it? A lot of these cases, I think, you know, it depends on how far back in time they go, really, too, whether that evidence does or does not exist. But oftentimes when survivors go, you know, to, you know, police or, you know, investigators about really powerful people. And those powerful people can have a lot of people around them that say,

Starting point is 00:14:35 I never saw her before. She wasn't at my party. I have no idea what you're talking about. You know, you kind of get this culture of protecting those celebrities. We've seen this with a lot of very powerful people in the past. We saw this with Weinstein. We saw this with Epstein. We saw this with Tyndall.

Starting point is 00:14:53 We saw this with, you know, all of these really powerful men that had the ability to control the world around them and, you know, influence others to protect them. And I think that that's a lot of what you have here, is you have people that don't have any power or influence that are confronted with power and influence and have not been able to break through that until more recently. And by the way, the apparently according to Buzzbee, the toxicology reports, the toxicology testing at hospitals revealed what he called weird drugs in the victim systems. And this included cocaine and a horse tranquilizer referred to as trance. So, Krista, that would be solid evidence if you have those reports. I guess the other way to strike it, those would say maybe they weren't coerced into taking those drugs, but they consented.

Starting point is 00:15:48 And that might not be sufficient for the claims. But again, those toxicology reports, I think, are pretty significant if they exist. Yeah, they're very significant. And, you know, I guess that goes to, you know, the argument that Combs' lawyer is already making that this is voluntary. And so it's voluntary consumption of drugs. It's voluntary entering into sexual, you know, relationships with multiple people in an evening. And, you know, so that's the argument that Combs and his lawyers are putting forward that this was all consensual.

Starting point is 00:16:19 Now, like you said, the minors, that doesn't really work. And, you know, but this is all very good evidence that these people have is if they did go to the hospital, if they did go to the police and they got this evidence. And, you know, what Bugsby is doing right now. He's got over 3,000 calls, and he's whittled that down to 120. He's probably going to have more plaintiffs as well once they start investigating it. But he's getting corroborating evidence from other people because while the police might not have believed, there's probably a lot of people that these victims told kind of at the same time, right, about when things were happening, people might have noticing, they might have had confidential

Starting point is 00:16:57 conversations with things. they might have went to therapy and their therapists know things. So there's going to be corroborating evidence that Bugsyby is going to get before making these, you know, claims in a court of law, which will be much different than doing it behind a podium and press conference. And this point is important to point out that Busby says that these attacks happened at private residences of, quote, people we all know. But he didn't really say who those people are and wasn't quite ready to reveal those alleged perpetrators. The day will come when we will name names other than Sean Combs, and there's a lot of names. It's a long list already. Of course, I already know who some of these individuals are, but because of the nature of this case,

Starting point is 00:17:41 we're going to make damn sure, damn sure that we're right before we do that. But the names that we're going to name, assuming that our investigators confirm and corroborate what we've been told are names that will shock you. These are individual cases. There are indeed other perpetrators involved. They will be revealed when that particular individual case is ready to be filed. They already know who they are. And I'm talking here about not just the cowardly but complicit bystanders.

Starting point is 00:18:13 That is, those people that we know watched this behavior occur and did nothing. And I'm talking about the people that participated, encouraged it, egged it on. They know who they are. Krista, that is a very big claim. And if you're about to reveal who knows who you're about to real very big names in the course of 120 lawsuits, what are the ramifications of that? Because let's be clear, federal prosecutors haven't named anybody yet. And so there's a reason for that too.

Starting point is 00:18:46 But if you're about to name high profile people, celebrities, I mean, what can we expect? What are the ramifications of that? I think there's been a lot of Bez going along about who might be named and that people throwing out names of who they think might be named. You know, clearly these people know who they are. They know where they've been and how closely they've been involved. I don't think that it's going to be just people that are close friends with Diddy or may have been at these parties. It's going to be people that are participating and are, you know, intertwined with what happened. And you also heard Bez being that same kind of segment, I believe, right there, talk about,

Starting point is 00:19:23 not just people, but corporations, banks, hotel chains that also will be like defendants potentially in this litigation that knew or should have known what was happening under, you know, their roof or with their money or with their participation and help. So it's not just very important, powerful people. It's going to be also corporations, which I think is not surprising. And I'll see, I'll be very interesting to see how it connects back. to the criminal case and because you're revealing things during the civil suit that may play a role in the criminal case. And if you're wondering about timeline, Busby says he expects the first of these new civil complaints to be filed within the next 30 days. For now, Sean Combs remains

Starting point is 00:20:09 locked up with no bail, but his legal team filed a motion to appeal that. Combs had offered to put up a $50 million bail package, even leveraging his home, promising to have his activities monitored, but two different judges determined when Combs was arrested that he could be a flight risk, that he was reaching out to witnesses, that he could be a danger. And so he's going to still be, by all accounts, locked up unless an appellate court disagrees. Quite a development, Krista Ramey, but really appreciate you coming on. Thank you so much, as always. Thank you so much, Jesse. All right, everybody, that's all we have for you right now here on Sidebar. Thank you so much for joining us. And as always, please subscribe on Apple Podcast, Spotify, YouTube,

Starting point is 00:20:48 wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Jesse Weber. Speak to you next time. You can binge all episodes of this long crime series. Add free right now on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.

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Law&Crime Sidebar - P. Diddy Accused of Sexually Assaulting 25 Minors in Disturbing New Allegations

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