the stage at the BET Awards in June 2022 to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award, Sean “Diddy” Combs was elated. “Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah!” he bellowed, punctuating his words with triumphant jumps. The adoring crowd — who gave him a sustained standing ovation — included his mother and children, longtime friends, and music-industry peers Kanye West, Janelle Monáe, Babyface, and Lil Wayne. After three decades of relentless hustling that took him from hungry teenage intern to A&R executive, producer, label impresario, respected fashion designer, and household brand name, Diddy had seemingly reached the apotheosis of his career.
He closed his eyes and repeatedly thanked God. He got down on one knee and praised his mother. He name-checked a laundry list of people who’d mentored and inspired him. “Anything I do is through love,” Combs proclaimed early in a nine-minute speech. “That’s what I evolved to be, and that’s what I’m doing right now.”
But soon, Combs struck a more somber tone. “I was in a dark place for a few years,” he said. “I gotta give a special thank you to the people that was really there for me.” He listed friends and advisers. Then, looking directly into the camera, he added, “Cassie, for holding me down in the dark times. Love.” He raised one hand to make an “L” sign and held his gaze steady, silently, for several seconds.
Combs and Casandra “Cassie” Ventura, a former singer for his iconic Bad Boy record label, had split four years earlier. But he had been openly pining for her ever since. He posted photos of her online and urged her to listen to Michael Jackson’s “The Lady in My Life.” He publicly congratulated her on her first pregnancy with her husband. His comments at the awards show were part of a pattern of behavior — one that had been tormenting Ventura for years. When she learned of her ex’s latest remark, sources say, Ventura was distressed. She was also resolute.
Almost 18 months later, in November 2023, Ventura sued Combs, claiming he held her in a violent form of sexual servitude throughout their relationship and raped her upon their final breakup, in 2018. She invoked Combs’ BET speech in her filing: “For Ms. Ventura, the ‘dark times’ were those she spent trapped by Mr. Combs in a cycle of abuse, violence, and sex trafficking.” She said Combs’ brutal beatings — one of them captured in harrowing hotel surveillance video obtained by CNN in May — left her with bruises, burst lips, black eyes, and extensive trauma.
For Grammy-winning songwriter Tiffany Red, a friend of Ventura’s who worked closely with the singer during the height of the alleged abuse, Combs’ words from the BET stage had been a taunt. “It’s like harassment,” she explains. “You’re still fucking with her — leave her alone. Leave her the fuck alone.”
In the five years after her breakup with Combs, Ventura remained silent. While he was posting about her pregnancy in 2019, she was “negotiating in distress” behind the scenes to escape her Bad Boy contract, Red says. (Despite Ventura signing a 10-album deal in 2006, Bad Boy only released one studio album by her.) Combs was allegedly trying to tie her separation agreement to a non-disparagement clause. “It’s not like we were negotiating with just her record label,” Red says. “We were negotiating with her abuser.” (Through her lawyer, Ventura declined to speak for this article. Combs did not respond to a request for comment on this allegation.)
At some point, Ventura checked herself into a rehabilitation center to deal with the “physical and psychological repercussions” of her time with Combs and found renewed purpose in being a mom, her lawsuit says. When she eventually gathered her strength and stepped forward, a flurry of other lawsuits followed. Five more women have since accused Combs of rape or violent sexual assault dating as far back as 1990 — two of whom claim that Combs secretly recorded their sexual encounters and showed the footage to others without their consent. Music producer Rodney “Lil Rod” Jones also sued, alleging Combs groped his genitals and forced him to “solicit sex workers and perform sex acts to the pleasure of Mr. Combs.”
While Combs would eventually take responsibility for the assault captured on surveillance video, he has vehemently denied all the other allegations against him. The day Ventura filed her complaint, he blasted it as a shakedown based on “outrageous lies.” “For the past six months, Mr. Combs has been subjected to Ms. Ventura’s persistent demand of $30 million, under the threat of writing a damaging book about their relationship, which was unequivocally rejected as blatant blackmail,” his lawyer, Ben Brafman, said. In response, Ventura’s lawyer, Douglas Wigdor, said Combs “offered Ms. Ventura eight figures to silence her and prevent the filing of this lawsuit.” The parties came to an undisclosed settlement within 24 hours of Ventura’s filing.
When his fourth rape accuser sued in December, Combs, 54, issued another passionate denial: “Enough is enough. For the last couple of weeks, I have sat silently and watched people try to assassinate my character, destroy my reputation and my legacy. Sickening allegations have been made against me by individuals looking for a quick payday. Let me be absolutely clear: I did not do any of the awful things being alleged. I will fight for my name, my family, and for the truth.”
For many, the lurid allegations against Combs were jarring, in part because he had risen to such great heights as a bankable bon vivant who threw the best parties from New York City to the Hamptons to Hollywood. He’s the pop-culture stalwart who walked under a parasol held by his campy valet Fonzworth Bentley in Saint-Tropez and turned up at a Met Gala in a Swarovski crystal-encrusted tuxedo and floor-length cape. He rapped about Bentleys and Benjamins and held court at his over-the-top annual White Parties attended by Leonardo DiCaprio, Beyoncé, Mariah Carey, and Martha Stewart. He called himself the Great Gatsby and considered circus showman P.T. Barnum his “muse.”
Now, the spotlight Combs constantly chased is trained on his alleged crimes. In staggering scenes that underscored his fall from grace, heavily armed Homeland Security agents stormed his sprawling Los Angeles and Miami estates as part of a federal sex-trafficking investigation on March 25. Investigators tore through his offices and bedrooms, leaving cables dangling from a command center and multiple safes wide open. Three gleaming Grammys and an Oscar sat atop a gutted console like relics of a crumbling regime. A crestfallen Combs was later seen alone, a cell phone hanging useless in his hand as he slowly paced around Miami-Opa Locka airport. His vacation in the Bahamas was canceled, his once-fortified homes breached, his adult sons handcuffed, and his empire on the brink.
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