(This story was up to date so as to add new info and a photograph.)
A girl is suing Sean “Diddy” Combs for an alleged sexual assault that passed off within the early 2000s, because the embattled hip-hop mogul stays in federal custody for a intercourse trafficking indictment.
Thalia Graves filed the lawsuit within the U.S. District Courtroom for the Southern District of New York on Tuesday, in keeping with courtroom paperwork obtained by USA TODAY. Graves, who says she was relationship considered one of Combs’ workers on the time, alleges Combs and his then-bodyguard, Joseph “Large Joe” Sherman, “viciously raped her” on the Unhealthy Boy Data studio in New York Metropolis across the summer season of 2001.
The lady is suing Combs and Sherman on fees of gender-motivated violence and violating New York regulation by allegedly recording and sharing footage of her assault.
Except for Combs and Sherman, a number of of Combs’ corporations, together with Unhealthy Boy Data, are named in Graves’ 26-page grievance.
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USA TODAY has reached out to Combs’ representatives for remark.
Combs, who was the topic of a intercourse trafficking investigation and a pair of federal raids, was arrested on Sept. 16 and charged with racketeering, intercourse trafficking and transportation to have interaction in prostitution. He was ordered to stay in federal custody after his appeals for bail have been denied twice.
Diddy accuser Thalia Graves speaks out: ‘I am glad that he’s locked up’
Graves held a press convention along with her lawyer, famed legal professional Gloria Allred, on Tuesday following her lawsuit. An emotional Graves appeared to achieve her compose earlier than making her assertion.
“The interior ache after being sexually assaulted has been extremely deep and laborious to place into phrases,” Graves stated whereas crying. “It goes past simply bodily hurt attributable to and through the assault.”
She continued: “It is a ache that reaches into the very core of who you might be and leaves emotional scars that will by no means totally heal.”
The press convention marked one of many first public statements from an alleged sufferer of Combs.
“A number of the hardest elements of this ache are the disgrace and guilt I’ve skilled that performs a unfavorable half in my day-to-day capability to operate correctly,” she added. “Being blamed, questioned and threatened has usually made me really feel nugatory, remoted and generally answerable for what occurred to me.”
Graves stated that she feels waves of withdrawal and “that it’s generally laborious to go away my home” or “even really feel protected in my very own pores and skin.”
She added: “I am glad that he’s locked up, however that is a short lived feeling of reduction.”
Thalia Graves says Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs drugged her earlier than violent rape
In her grievance, Graves claims Combs “exploited” his relationship with Graves’ then-partner, an government at Unhealthy Boy Data, to get her to fulfill with Combs and Sherman and talk about Graves’ boyfriend’s “efficiency points.”
In the course of the assembly, the lads allegedly gave Graves a glass of wine, which she says was “doubtless laced with a drug” as she subsequently misplaced consciousness. Graves claims she later woke as much as discover herself “sure and restrained.”
The lady, who was 25 on the time, alleges Combs, then 32, “mercilessly raped her, anally and vaginally,” whereas Sherman “forcefully slammed” her onto a desk and proceeded to slap her and “repeatedly thrust his penis into her mouth.” Regardless of her “cries for assist all through the assault,” Graves says the lads remained “undeterred.”
Graves shunned reporting the alleged assault on the time as a result of she feared Combs and Sherman “would use their energy to wreck her life, as they’d repeatedly, explicitly threatened to do,” in keeping with the lawsuit.
Graves skilled suicidal ideation within the aftermath of her rape and has undergone “intensive psychological remedy” because the incident, in keeping with the lawsuit. She allegedly continues to endure from “extreme melancholy, anxiousness and panic assaults.”
Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs filmed Thalia Graves assault, per lawsuit
In November 2023, Graves reportedly discovered that Combs and Sherman had recorded their alleged assault of her, in keeping with her lawsuit. She claims they confirmed the footage to “a number of males, searching for to publicly degrade and humiliate each (Graves) and her boyfriend,” in addition to offered it as pornography.
The lady alleges that when she reached out to Sherman in an try and persuade him to destroy the intercourse tape or give it to her, he didn’t reply.
Graves “couldn’t consider that” Combs and Sherman “would document themselves committing such a ugly crime after which proceed proudly and broadly to disseminate the recording of it,” the lawsuit reads.
“She was distraught and sunk right into a deep melancholy. She once more thought of ending her life.”
Graves’ legal professional claims Combs and Sherman’s filming of the alleged assault violates New York Civil Rights Regulation 52-B, as Graves was “depicted in a video picture unclothed and with intimate physique elements uncovered and fascinating in sexual conduct with one other individual.”
In the meantime, the alleged distribution of Graves’ rape video with out her consent constitutes a violation of New York Metropolis Administrative Code 10-180, in accordance the lawsuit.
As compensation, Graves is searching for unspecified compensatory and punitive damages, in addition to a courtroom order that will require Combs and Sherman to destroy all copies and pictures of the video of her alleged sexual assault and chorus from distributing the footage sooner or later.
Graves can also be requesting a trial by jury.
“This motion seeks redress for” Combs and Sherman’s “brutalizing, misogynistic and violent assaults on (Graves), beginning in 2001 with their rape and persevering with within the subsequent years as they compounded her humiliation by displaying the video of the sexual assault to others,” the lawsuit reads.
Suicide Lifeline: In the event you or somebody could also be combating suicidal ideas, you’ll be able to name the U.S. Nationwide Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988 any time, day or night time, or chat on-line.
Disaster Textual content Line gives free, 24/7, confidential assist through textual content message to folks in disaster once they textual content “HOME” to 741741.
If you’re a survivor of sexual assault, RAINN gives assist by way of the Nationwide Sexual Assault Hotline at 800.656.HOPE (4673) and Hotline.RAINN.org and en Español RAINN.org/es.
Contributing: Taijuan Moorman and KiMi Robinson, USA TODAY