What The Hell America!

The video begins with a barefoot woman walking fast toward the elevator lobby of a Los Angeles hotel.

Within seconds, she is yanked violently by a man with a bath towel around his waist, who grabs her by the back of her neck and throws her to the ground before kicking and dragging her. 

Hip-hop impresario Sean “Diddy” Combs had long denied he had ever assaulted his former girlfriend. The March 2016 tape made it clear — vocalist Cassie Ventura was the woman on the floor and Combs was the man in the towel. And within days of the video first being broadcast by CNN last May, Combs issued an apology in which he said, “I was disgusted then when I did it. I’m disgusted now.”

The tape isn’t just revolting, federal prosecutors say — it is also a crucial piece of evidence that Combs led a “criminal enterprise” in which he “abused, threatened, and coerced women and others around him to fulfill his sexual desires, protect his reputation, and conceal his conduct” for years. 

Combs’ conduct and how he wielded his power is the focal point of a trial that began Monday in federal court in New York, where he faces sex trafficking, racketeering, and other charges in connection with a series of elaborate parties known as “freak-offs” in which the authorities say women were coerced into participating in sexual encounters with Combs and others. 

Combs has vehemently denied the charges, saying that any sexual encounters were consensual, and his lawyers have characterized the “freak-offs” as simply part of his non-monogamous lifestyle. 

While a jury has yet to render a verdict in Combs’ case, the closely watched trial follows advocacy efforts that made it easier for survivors of sexual violence to be heard in court. Advocates said they want the music industry to foster safer work environments by ending their efforts to silence accusers and conceal accusations, a practice that prosecutors accused Combs of engaging in.

For decades, prosecutors say, “Combs relied on the employees, resources and influence of the multi-faceted business empire that he led and controlled — creating a criminal enterprise whose members and associates engaged in, and attempted to engage in, among other crimes, sex trafficking, forced labor, kidnapping, arson, bribery, and obstruction of justice.”

“I think everyone was waiting to see when hip-hop was going to have its #MeToo moment,” said Mark Anthony Neal, the James B. Duke Distinguished Professor of African & African American Studies and Chair of the Department of African & African American Studies at Duke University, who has extensively researched the history of the genre.

Combs’ legal team has alleged racial bias in the government’s decision to charge him with violating the Mann Act for transporting sex workers across state lines as part of the “freak-offs.” The law, originally titled the White Slave Traffic Act when it was passed in 1910, has a racist history and Combs’ defense has argued that it’s been disproportionately leveled at Black men. 

Historically, Neal said, law enforcement has “criminalized the sexual identity of Black men,” but he added that doesn’t mean that predatory behavior by Black men should be excused. 

“If we’re talking about predatory behavior by Black men in Black communities, amongst Black people, we have to have a higher standard of accountability than to just say, ‘Well, you didn’t go after that white guy,’” Neal said. 

While any potential long-term effects of the Combs case remain to be seen, Neal said that it is unlikely he would even be in a courtroom without the prosecutions of singer R. Kelly, who was convicted of sex trafficking and racketeering in a closely watched 2021 trial, and Bill Cosby, who stood trial in 2018 amid allegations from more than 60 women that he drugged and sexually assaulted them. Cosby was found guilty of three counts of aggravated indecent assault in the case, which revolved around one woman’s allegations, but the conviction was overturned on a legal technicality nearly three years later by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. 

Combs’ trial “doesn’t occur without Bill Cosby and R. Kelly being taken to task before him,” said Neal.

What Combs’ defense says

The mogul’s legal team did not respond to Capital B’s requests for comment. Combs’ attorneys told CNN, “These are not new allegations or new accusers. These are the same individuals, former long-term girlfriends, who were involved in consensual relationships. This was their private sex life, defined by consent, not coercion.”

With regard to the Mann Act, historians say the law originally was meant to discourage interracial relationships by penalizing Black men for interstate travel with white women.

“The Mann Act absolutely has those racist roots,” said Emma M. Hetherington, a clinical associate professor at the University of Georgia. 

The law was used to prosecute Black men — most infamously boxer Jack Johnson — in interracial relationships. 

Combs’ legal team has also asserted that powerful white men like Eliot Spitzer — who resigned in 2008 as governor of New York amid a prostitution scandal but was never criminally charged — have avoided similar prosecution. 

“White women are more likely to be believed than Black women, unfortunately. That’s not how it should be, but it’s bias within our system,” Hetherington added. “And Black men are more likely to be arrested and alleged to be criminals than white men.”

But, she added, “that’s not a legal defense to a trafficking charge.”

The importance of the lookback law

In November 2023, Ventura — Combs’ former girlfriend — filed a lawsuit that said that he was abusive for more than a decade. She said Combs raped and beat her and forced her to have sex with male sex workers, while “introducing her to a drug-fueled lifestyle that kept her complacent and compliant.”

Ventura was able to file her lawsuit because of a temporary window — also known as a lookback law — that allowed people in New York state to file sex abuse lawsuits after the statute of limitations had passed. 

#MeToo founder Tarana Burke told the Associated Press last year that the legislation “was a direct result of survivors organizing as part of” #MeToo. “Survivors pushed hard that we need this law. This is directly related to the power of the movement.”

Combs now faces dozens of civil lawsuits alleging sexual assault that span nearly the entirety of his decades-long music career. 

Jimanekia Eborn, a trauma specialist who founded an advocacy group for sexual assault survivors from marginalized communities, said Ventura’s lawsuit prompted “a lot of tears and a lot of feelings” within the survivor advocate community. “Her story is so many people’s stories in different forms.”

Eborn has been an advocate for longer statute of limitations because she knows how difficult it can be for survivors of sexual assault to process trauma.

“Those that don’t understand trauma, they go, ‘Well, it just happened to you. Why don’t you remember it?’ Or ‘It happened to you five years ago? Why are you finally coming forward?,’ she said. “Not understanding the ways that people process, the ways that trauma can stunt us, the way that it emotionally affects us, it physically affects us.”

These lookback windows, which have been implemented in various states, are an acknowledgement by state legislatures that “maybe our old statute of limitations wasn’t sufficient,” said Hetherington, the law professor.

“We’ve found a lot of healing effects for survivors and a lot of increased ability for survivors to find justice under this type of legislation,” Hetherington said.

Such legislation has also generated controversy — specifically around whether it’s fair for defendants to face civil lawsuits for decades-old allegations. 

But, Hetherington said, “in the majority of these cases, we’re talking about defendants who hold all of the power.” 

Advocates for survivors of sexual misconduct have also pushed for changes around nondisclosure agreements, rampant in the music industry and other entertainment spaces. In 2022, then-President Joe Biden signed a law that bars companies from forcing employees to enter arbitration in sexual assault and sexual harassment claims. The change gives victims a choice in how they pursue justice, allowing them to take their claims to court, where the outcome will be public.

As head of Bad Boy Records, Combs found a way to appeal to both traditional R&B audiences and harder-edge hip-hop fans. At the height of his fame in the late ’90s and early aughts, he began expanding his empire to include a fashion line, a vodka brand, and exclusive, celebrity-studded parties in the Hamptons. 

By then, “everybody wanted to be close to him because he was bringing money and cultural validation to hip-hop,” Neal said.

Now, Combs faces his day in court.

As for Ventura, after CNN published a video of Combs attacking her last May, the singer wrote on Instagram that domestic violence “broke me down to someone I never thought I would become.”

“My only ask is that EVERYONE open your heart to believing victims the first time,” she wrote. “It takes a lot of heart to tell the truth out of a situation that you were powerless in. I offer my hand to those that are still living in fear.”

She added: “This healing journey is never ending.”