REUTERS
Sean “Diddy” Combs has been hit with seven new sexual abuse lawsuits, as his lawyers asked the judge overseeing the music mogul’s criminal sex trafficking case for a gag order against Combs’ accusers and their lawyers.
The civil lawsuits were made public on Sunday and Monday by four men and three women over alleged misconduct in New York, Los Angeles and Las Vegas dating to 2000 but mainly in 2022, the accusers’ lawyer Tony Buzbee said on Facebook.
Some lawsuits said unidentified celebrities also assaulted Combs’ accusers.
Combs, 54, faces at least two dozen civil lawsuits accusing him of sexual misconduct, including 13 from Buzbee’s firm.
Combs has denied wrongdoing. He has also pleaded not guilty in the criminal case, and is appealing his more than month-long detention in a Brooklyn jail after being denied bail twice.
The new lawsuits compound the legal problems for Combs, who according to prosecutors coerced victims into participating in sex acts against their will, bribing and intimidating them into keeping quiet, and employing his staff to hide it all.
‘READY TO PARTY’
In one new lawsuit, the plaintiff Jane Doe said she was 13 when Combs drugged and assaulted her at an afterparty for the 2000 MTV Video Music Awards in New York.
She said Combs and an unnamed male celebrity vaginally raped her while an unnamed female celebrity looked on, after Combs proclaimed “You are ready to party!”
Another accuser, John Doe, said he was a 17-year-old aspiring artist making small talk with Combs at a 2022 party in a Manhattan hotel penthouse, with Combs assuring him that “he could make him a star.”
