R&B vocalist Cassandra Ventura sued Sean “Diddy” Combs in US federal court on Thursday, accusing the rapper and hip-hop mogul she once dated and whose music label she signed with of subjecting her to serial physical abuse, sexual slavery and rape.
One of the central allegations against Combs by Ventura, who performs under the stage name Cassie, was that he forced her to engage in sex acts with a succession of male prostitutes he hired while he watched and filmed the encounters for his own pleasure.
The lawsuit, filed in US District Court in Manhattan, also accuses Combs of regularly beating Ventura over the course of a 10-year professional and romantic relationship in which he controlled her through intimidation and by plying her with drugs and alcohol.
Photo: AFP
Ventura, 37, alleges that Combs raped her near the end of their relationship in 2018 when she broached the idea of leaving him.
Combs’ lawyer, Ben Brafman, issued a statement saying his client “vehemently denies these offensive and outrageous allegations.”
Brafman said Ventura resorted to filing a lawsuit “riddled with baseless and outrageous lies” after a failed attempt to blackmail Combs into paying her US$30 million by threatening to write a damaging book about their relationship.
Combs, 54, founder of the landmark label Bad Boy Records, is one of the most influential producers and executives in hip-hop and a hugely successful performer in his own right, as well as the impresario of his own Sean John clothing line.
Forbes magazine ranked him in 2017 as the world’s highest-paid musician, then earning an estimated US$130 million a year.
The lawsuit filed on Thursday depicted Combs, who has formerly gone by such monikers as “P. Diddy,” “Puff Daddy” and “Diddy,” as an erratic, controlling individual with violent tendencies aimed at Ventura and others.
The lawsuit said he forced Ventura to carry his handgun for him in her purse, once dangled a friend of hers over the balcony of a high-rise hotel suite and blew up a car belonging to rapper Kid Cudi after learning he was interested in Ventura.
‘CHILD PORNOGRAPHY’: The doll on Shein’s Web site measure about 80cm in height, and it was holding a teddy bear in a photo published by a daily newspaper France’s anti-fraud unit on Saturday said it had reported Asian e-commerce giant Shein (希音) for selling what it described as “sex dolls with a childlike appearance.” The French Directorate General for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control (DGCCRF) said in a statement that the “description and categorization” of the items on Shein’s Web site “make it difficult to doubt the child pornography nature of the content.” Shortly after the statement, Shein announced that the dolls in question had been withdrawn from its platform and that it had launched an internal inquiry. On its Web site, Le Parisien daily published a
China’s Shenzhou-20 crewed spacecraft has delayed its return mission to Earth after the vessel was possibly hit by tiny bits of space debris, the country’s human spaceflight agency said yesterday, an unusual situation that could disrupt the operation of the country’s space station Tiangong. An impact analysis and risk assessment are underway, the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) said in a statement, without providing a new schedule for the return mission, which was originally set to land in northern China yesterday. The delay highlights the danger to space travel posed by increasing amounts of debris, such as discarded launch vehicles or vessel
RUBBER STAMP? The latest legislative session was the most productive in the number of bills passed, but critics attributed it to a lack of dissenting voices On their last day at work, Hong Kong’s lawmakers — the first batch chosen under Beijing’s mantra of “patriots administering Hong Kong” — posed for group pictures, celebrating a job well done after four years of opposition-free politics. However, despite their smiles, about one-third of the Legislative Council will not seek another term in next month’s election, with the self-described non-establishment figure Tik Chi-yuen (狄志遠) being among those bowing out. “It used to be that [the legislature] had the benefit of free expression... Now it is more uniform. There are multiple voices, but they are not diverse enough,” Tik said, comparing it
RELATIONS: Cultural spats, such as China’s claims over the origins of kimchi, have soured public opinion in South Korea against Beijing over the past few years Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) yesterday met South Korean counterpart Lee Jae-myung, after taking center stage at an Asian summit in the wake of US President Donald Trump’s departure. The talks on the sidelines of the APEC gathering came the final day of Xi’s first trip to South Korea in more than a decade, and a day after his meeting with the Canadian prime minister that was a reset of the nations’ damaged ties. Trump had flown to South Korea for the summit, but promptly jetted home on Thursday after sealing a trade war pause with Xi, with the two
RSS