P. Diddy Accused of Sexually Assaulting 25 Minors in Disturbing New Allegations

The biggest secret in the entertainment industry that really wasn't a secret at all has finally been revealed to the world. A law firm in Texas says thousands of people have come to them, making allegations against Shawn "Diddy" Combs, with claims dating back to the 1990s. This time, the shocking new accusations include alleged victims who say they were minors at the time.

We're going to dig into these claims and how it might impact Combs' criminal case. Welcome to Sidebar, presented by Law & Crime. I'm Jesse Weber.

A well-known Texas lawyer announced to a crowd of reporters on Tuesday that his law firm plans to pursue legal action against music mogul Shawn "Diddy" Combs on behalf of more than 100 victims. More than two dozen of those future plaintiffs say they were just kids when Combs allegedly assaulted them. We're talking about attorney Tony Busby, and it's not just Combs that he says is caught in the crosshairs.

The wall of silence has now been broken, and victims are coming forward. Our team has had, at this point, more than 3,285 individuals contact us, claiming to have been victimized by Shawn Combs. We now represent 120 individuals who intend to bring civil claims in civil court against Shawn "Diddy" Combs, as well as claims against many other individuals and entities that we will name as defendants as we file these individual cases.

I expect that through this process, many powerful people will be exposed and many dirty secrets will be revealed. We know what we are potentially up against. This is always the case in situations like this when a celebrity is involved.

People can be downright mean and nasty; you'd be shocked at how far fans will go, no matter the evidence to the contrary, to defend celebrities they love. And there's a reason for this: the word "fans. " They're fanatics.

I've personally already been threatened multiple times on social media, and when I agreed to pursue this, I expected as much. This isn't my first rodeo, but victims who step forward to have their voices heard should not be subjected to that kind of conduct; they should not be targeted. According to Busby, more than 3,000 people have contacted his office so far with stories about Combs, who, by the way, is currently incarcerated in Brooklyn, New York, on federal charges of racketeering, conspiracy, and sex trafficking, as well as transportation to engage in prostitution.

Combs was arrested on September 16th pursuant to a grand jury indictment. His arrest came after a raid by federal investigators on his two homes—one in Miami, one in Los Angeles—back in March. Combs has also been subject to a litany of civil suits already, which really got rolling last fall when his ex, Cassandra Ventura, made shocking allegations about her relationship with Combs.

Cassie claimed that Combs was abusive for nearly the entirety of their 10-year relationship. She also claimed he forced her to participate in the now infamous sex parties known as "freak offs," or "fos," when commercial sex workers would be brought in to have sex with Cassie and others while the participants were allegedly under the influence of drugs. Those freak-off allegations, by the way, are also at the heart of the prosecution's case, and prosecutors claim that Combs recorded these sex sessions both for his own pleasure and seemingly for potential blackmail.

So to hear of a hundred more lawsuits raises a lot of interesting questions in terms of the timing and its relation to the criminal case. So clearly, I'm going to be very busy when all these lawsuits drop. But the good news is I have something now that I use that has made my life a little bit easier.

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A little bit of background about the man making these very serious allegations: attorney Tony Busby. Now, you may recognize him; you may recognize that name. He has represented multiple women who claim that football star Deshaun Watson, who now plays for the Cleveland Browns, sexually assaulted them.

In fact, he just filed a new lawsuit a few weeks ago on behalf of a woman who claims that Watson assaulted her back in 2020. Now, Watson, to be clear, hasn't been criminally charged—two different grand juries decided not to indict him. Busby filed this new lawsuit after months-long negotiations with Watson's legal team apparently went nowhere.

The NFL says it's doing its own investigation under its personal conduct policy. But going back to Shawn Combs, that's who’s now in Busby's sights. Now, from the more than 3,000 alleged claims made, that has been whittled down to 120 people who are moving forward with lawsuits, according to Busby.

Now, in response to Busby's news conference, Erica Wolf, an attorney for Shawn Combs, released the following statement: "Mr Combs emphatically and categorically denies as false and defamatory any claim that he sexually abused anyone, including minors. He looks forward to proving his innocence and vindicating himself in court, where the truth will be established based on evidence, not speculation. " But Busby told reporters that the future plaintiffs have "legitimacy and merit," thanks to corroborating evidence and witnesses.

In fact, a former detective from the Houston Police Department has joined his firm to help vet people and their accounts, as Busby says that some have already even spoken with the FBI in connection with that agency's investigation into Sean Colmes. Busby says they're sharing all information that they come across. The allegations against Colmes run the gamut from sexual assault and rape to false imprisonment and prostitution.

Of the 120 individuals that Busby plans to represent, he says 25 of them were minors when they say they were attacked. You should know that in this group, it is evenly divided between males and females: there are 60 males and 60 females who have joined us to pursue these claims. As plaintiffs in this group, 62% are African American, 30% are white, and the remainder are Hispanic or Asian.

The victims are from more than 25 states; the majority are from California, New York, Georgia, and Florida. Our youngest victim at the time of the occurrence was 9 years old; we have an individual who was 14 years old and one who was 15. Twenty-five of the 120 individuals who are plaintiffs in these cases were minors at the time of the acts complained of.

Most of these events and incidents occurred at parties, typically after-parties or album release parties, New Year's Eve parties, Fourth of July parties, and something they called a "puppy party. " Although several of these events occurred at auditions, many times, especially young people wanting to break into the industry, were coerced into this type of conduct under the promise of being made a star—under the promise of having Sean Colmes listen to their tape or even let them read for him. At 9 years old, to talk about this, I want to bring in trial attorney Christa Ry, who has worked closely with child victims of sexual abuse.

Christa, good to see you; thanks for coming on. First, I want to talk about the timing of this. It comes out after the indictment, after the arrest.

What do you make of the timing? I think the timing is about perfect. A lot of people don’t come forward right away for a number of reasons, and when you do this in this manner—after the publicity that the indictment and the arrest have received—a lot of these survivors, this is really kind of top of mind for them right now.

So having this happen right now kind of allows them that safety and encourages people who have tried to push this away to think about maybe they should help others. I think that's really one of the significant reasons for why you do this now. Does it hurt them, though, in the sense that defense attorneys could say, “You had all this time to come forward; you only come out after all the lawsuits; you only come out after Sean Colmes has been criminally indicted.

” Would it hurt their credibility in a way, or is that something they would be able to fight against? No, and a lot of states have what's called "rape shield" laws that actually protect that sort of evidence from being used against a survivor of sexual abuse or sexual assault. So really, no, that can't be used that way.

In the past, that’s what was typically done; you would take that sort of evidence and say, “You’re just coming forward now; it’s all about the money, and that’s why you’re doing this now. ” No, this really isn’t how trauma survivors reconcile what happened to them or how they push forward with life after being so traumatically abused, as some of these people sound like they were. They have to come to terms with a lot of things themselves just to be able to live, breathe, and move about in the world.

The last thing they’re thinking about is confronting someone as powerful and as significant in terms of influence as Sean Colmes. No, that’s a very fair argument. Here’s the thing that I wanted to ask you about: Look, I’ve said it several times over the past few weeks that, based on prior allegations made in lawsuits against Colmes, given what we’re just hearing now, I was surprised that there weren't any federal charges related to children in his indictment.

Several of the lawsuits that Colmes faces in civil court mention misconduct with minors. I'm asking you now, as we’re hearing that 25 plaintiffs might come forward saying they were abused as children, does that chip away at the legitimacy of these claims regarding the minors? Meaning, the feds looked into it; they didn’t find anything—maybe they didn’t find the claims credible; or is it that the feds weren’t aware of these claims yet and now might be looking into it?

Or is there another reason for why Colmes was not charged with respect to minors? That evidence is still being collected, and there could be a grand jury still seated, collecting evidence and investigating this right now. There could be superseding indictments that come about.

I think that we can’t really make any assumptions based upon the indictment that we currently have. The credibility of those claims in a criminal case and a civil case, as you know, are very different in terms of the burden of proof. In a criminal case, you have the higher standard of beyond a reasonable doubt.

A Reasonable Doubt, on the other hand, in the civil case, you have just a preponderance of the evidence, which means it is just more likely true than not true. If you believe one side a little bit more than the other, then that side wins. So, I think that there's also that.

With minor claims, they're particularly tricky because minors' memories are not as good. When you're talking about being drugged, potentially, that could even make it more complicated in terms of proving these minor claims. Something that I encounter frequently in my practice is that sometimes minors will just say, "I don't know," whether they just don't want to talk about something or they have very distinct ways of protecting themselves.

So, it's a lot more difficult to work with minors, and it takes a little bit longer to build those cases. I wouldn't say we're going to rule that out, that there might not be charges with minors, but right now, that's just what we're working with. No, 100%, he could be hit with a super probing indictment, but you would imagine that after investigating him for quite some time, if these allegations are true, why he wouldn't be hit with a charge related to minors.

Because I'll tell you one thing: while his defense team is currently saying that their defense will be everything was consensual, including these freak-off sessions, when you involve a minor, consent is thrown out the window. When it comes to how Combs was allegedly able to hurt so many people—and you mentioned that it allegedly was through the use of drugs—this is according to Busby. He says the victims recounted stories of being at parties and being told that they had to drink this drink that was handed to them, and if they didn't, they were kicked out.

Busby alleges that once a victim was unconscious, Combs and others would rape that person. He also says that 55% of the victims reported the alleged assaults to police or hospital staff but weren't believed, and further action wasn't taken. Christa, if that's true, what does that tell you?

It's heartbreaking, isn't it? A lot of these cases, I think, depend on how far back in time they go, really, as to whether that evidence does or does not exist. Oftentimes, when survivors go to police or investigators about really powerful people, those powerful people can have a lot of people around them who say, "I never saw her before.

She wasn't at my party. I have no idea what you're talking about. " You kind of get this culture of protecting those celebrities.

We've seen this with a lot of very powerful people in the past. We saw this with Weinstein, Epstein, Tindle, and all of these really powerful men that had the ability to control the world around them and influence others to protect them. That's a lot of what you have here: people who don't have any power or influence confronted with power and influence and who have not been able to break through that.

More recently, apparently, according to Busby, the toxicology reports—the toxicology testing at hospitals—revealed what he called "weird drugs" in the victims' systems, including cocaine and a horse tranquilizer referred to as "Tranq. " So, Christa, that would be solid evidence if you have those reports. I guess the other way to strike at those would be to say maybe they weren't coerced into taking those drugs, but they intended to.

That might not be sufficient for the claims, but again, those toxicology reports are pretty significant if they exist. Yeah, they're very significant, and I guess that goes to the argument that Combs' lawyer is already making: that this was voluntary. So it's voluntary consumption of drugs, voluntary entering into sexual relationships with multiple people in an evening.

That's the argument that Combs and his lawyers are putting forward—that this was all consensual. Now, like you said, the minors, that doesn't really work. But this is all very good evidence that these people have if they did go to the hospital or to the police and got this evidence.

You know what Busby is doing right now? He's getting—he's got over 3,000 calls, and he's whittled that down to 120. He's probably going to have more plaintiffs as well once they start investigating it, but he's getting corroborating evidence from other people.

Because while the police might not have believed, there's probably a lot of people that these victims told kind of at the same time, right about when things were happening. People might have noticed things; they might have had confidential conversations; they might have gone to therapy, and their therapists know things. So there's going to be corroborating evidence that Busby is going to get before making these claims in a court of law, which will be much different than doing it behind a podium at a press conference.

This point is important to note: Busby says that these attacks happened at private residences of, quote, "people we all know," but he didn't really say who those people are and wasn't quite ready to reveal those alleged perpetrators. Take a look. The day will come when we will name names other than Sean Combs, and there's a lot of names—it's a long list already.

And of course, I already know who some of these individuals are, but because of the nature of this case, we're going to make damn sure—damn sure—that we're right before we do that. Uh, but the names that we're going to name, assuming that our investigators confirm and corroborate what we've been told, are names that will shock you. These are individual cases; there are indeed other perpetrators involved.

They will be revealed when that particular individual case is ready to be filed. They already know who they are, and I'm talking here about not just the cowardly but complicit bystanders—that is, those people that we know watched this behavior occur and did nothing. But I'm talking about the people that participated, encouraged it, egged it on.

They know who they are. Christa, that is a very big claim, and if you're about to reveal who knows, you're about to reveal very big names in the course of 120 lawsuits. What are the ramifications of that?

Because let's be clear: federal prosecutors haven't named anybody yet, and so there's a reason for that too. But if you're about to name high-profile people, celebrities—I mean, what can we expect? What are the ramifications of that?

I think there's been a lot of buzz going along about who might be named, with people throwing out names of who they think might be named. You know, clearly these people know who they are. Um, they know where they've been and how closely they've been involved.

I don't think that it's going to be just people that are close friends with Diddy or may have been at these parties. It's going to be people that are participating and are, um, you know, entwined with what happened. And you also heard Busby in that same kind of segment, I believe right there, talk about not just people, but corporations, banks, hotel chains, that also will be like defendants, potentially, in this litigation—those that knew or should have known what was happening under, you know, their roof or with their money or with their, you know, participation and help.

So, it's not just very important, powerful people; it's going to be corporations, which I think is not surprising, and I'll see. It'll be very interesting to see how it connects back to the criminal case, um, because you're revealing things during the civil suit that may play a role in the criminal case. And if you're wondering about the timeline, Busby says he expects the first of these new civil complaints to be filed within the next 30 days.

For now, Sean Colmes remains locked up with no bail, but his legal team filed a motion to appeal. Colmes had offered to put up a $50 million bail package, even leveraging his home, promising to have his activities monitored. But two different judges determined when Colmes was arrested that he could be a flight risk, that he was reaching out to witnesses, that he could be a danger.

And, uh, so he's going to still be, by all accounts, locked up unless the appellate court disagrees. Quite a development, Christa. Remy, I really appreciate you coming on.

Thank you so much, as always. Thank you so much, Jesse. All right, everybody, that's all we have for you right now here on Sidebar.

Thank you so much for joining us, and as always, please subscribe to our podcast on Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Jesse Weber; I'll speak to you next time.