Sean “Diddy” Combs, the hip-hop mogul whose career has long straddled triumph and turbulence, is now facing a storm of four new sexual assault lawsuits filed in New York under the state’s Gender-Motivated Violence Act (GMVA). The cases, all lodged in the final hours before the GMVA’s two-year lookback window slams shut on March 1, echo a grim pattern: accusers allege they were drugged, manipulated, and violated by Combs in incidents spanning three decades. The rapper’s legal team has dismissed the claims as “opportunistic” fabrications stitched from “baseless rumors”—but for the plaintiffs, the reckoning is just beginning.
The GMVA, amended in 2022 to revive expired claims, opened a fleeting portal for survivors of gender-based violence to seek justice, regardless of when the abuse occurred. With the window closing this week, New York courts have become a battleground for high-profile reckonings. Combs, already jailed at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center ahead of a May 5 criminal trial tied to a separate 2012 assault allegation from a male escort, now confronts a fresh gauntlet of civil suits.
The lawsuits paint a harrowing mosaic of coercion. Aristalia Benitez, a 20-year-old NYU student in 1995, claims Combs groped her at a Tommy Hilfiger-linked party before she blacked out, awakening hours later in a cab with vaginal soreness and no memory of how she got there. Justin Gooch, then 16, alleges Combs drugged him with ketamine in a Manhattan nightclub bathroom in 1999 before assaulting him, later quipping, “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”
That same year, music scout Leslie Cockrell says she was lured to a Hamptons mansion teeming with “naked people engaging in sexual activities,” where Combs offered her a spiked drink before raping her as she drifted in and out of consciousness. In 2007, Kendra Haffoney—then a contestant on VH1’s *I Want to Work for Diddy*—claims the mogul forced her into oral sex at a New York afterparty, then later abused her again at his Los Angeles estate. Each plaintiff describes near-identical tactics: substances slipped into drinks, blurred memories, and physical trauma.
Combs’ camp has fired back with ferocity. “No matter how many lawsuits are filed,” a rep told Variety, “Mr. Combs has never sexually assaulted or sex trafficked anyone.” The statement lambasted the suits as “media headlines stitched together” by faceless “opportunists” exploiting the GMVA deadline. Yet the sheer volume of allegations—now totaling at least five accusers in recent months—casts a shadow over the Bad Boy founder’s legacy, already frayed by years of legal skirmishes.
As Combs awaits trial in federal detention, the GMVA window’s closure marks a pivotal moment for New York’s #MeToo era—a reminder that for survivors, time rarely heals all wounds. But for Diddy, the clock is ticking louder than ever. Whether these cases unravel as “last-minute” gambits or a damning chorus of voices, one truth remains: in the court of public opinion, the verdicts are already pouring in.
Source Variety
