With Sean Combs in jail, lawsuits continue to pile up

A woman filed a lawsuit against hip-hop mogul Sean Combs on Friday alleging that he repeatedly coerced her into forced sexual encounters over a period of several years, in part by compelling her to take drugs that caused her to fall unconscious.

The suit, which was brought in state court in New York by an anonymous plaintiff who describes herself as a business owner and a model, recalls a relationship that continued on and off between 2021 and this year, in which Combs and his employees would arrange for her to travel to his homes.

“Combs would make her ‘perform a show’ for him and would ply her with alcohol and substances until she passed out — she would wake up with bruising and injuries but with no recollection of how she sustained her injuries,” the lawsuit says.

Representatives for Combs did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The latest complaint against Combs comes as he faces federal racketeering conspiracy and sex trafficking charges; he has pleaded not guilty. His lawyers have adamantly denied the charges, accusing prosecutors of manipulating sexual encounters between consenting adults into a sex trafficking case.

As he awaits trial, detained in a New York City jail, the lawsuits against Combs have continued to grow. The lawsuit is the eighth filed over the past year by a woman accusing him of sexual assault; three other lawsuits have made allegations of sexual misconduct. Combs’ lawyers have been seeking dismissals of the other suits in court and have described them as false claims cobbled together to try to secure a financial settlement from Combs.

The newest lawsuit said the plaintiff, who lives in Florida, met Combs overseas in 2020 and began seeing him regularly in 2021. Drivers would pick her up, the suit says, and she would be taken to his homes in Los Angeles, New York and Florida.

The suit highlighted an instance in April 2022 when the plaintiff alleged that Combs sexually assaulted her at his home in Los Angeles. That same spring, the court filing says, she woke up with bruised feet and a bite mark on her heel but did not know how she had been injured.

And in a separate instance later that year, the court filing says, she was “compelled to ingest an unknown substance” and lost consciousness throughout the night; she later discovered she was pregnant but had a miscarriage.

The plaintiff says in the suit that she felt compelled to continue visiting Combs because of repeated calls and texts from him and third parties that continued until she complied. She says in the suit that Combs would pay her an allowance “to control her,” record sexual encounters without her permission and pressure her to involve others in their sexual encounters despite her objections.

The legal claims at the center of the suit include sexual assault and violation of New York City’s Victims of Gender-Motivated Violence Protection Law.

The allegations align with some of those made by federal prosecutors, whose case revolves around allegations that Combs coerced women into elaborate sexual encounters with male prostitutes called “freak offs,” which they said Combs often recorded. Prosecutors accused him of drugging women to comply with these encounters and using financial coercion to keep them in line.

The indictment refers to one specific alleged victim — described in court papers as “Victim 1” — whose allegations closely align with those of Cassie, a singer and former girlfriend of Combs who filed, and quickly settled, a lawsuit last year accusing him of years of sexual and physical abuse.

In a court hearing, a lawyer for Combs, Marc Agnifilo, said the government’s case was based on the allegations of that one accuser, whose decade-long relationship with his client was troubled but whose sexual encounters were consensual. “That is how these two adults chose to be intimate,” he said.

The government has alleged, however, that “multiple victims have been abused in freak offs.”

A lawyer for the anonymous plaintiff in Friday’s lawsuit, Joseph L Ciaccio, declined to comment on whether his client was involved in the federal investigation.