Embattled music mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs allegedly drugged and sexually assaulted a 22-year-old aspiring model after meeting her at a New York restaurant and luring her back to his music studio with the promise of helping her career, a new lawsuit filed Tuesday in federal court in Manhattan claims.
The new lawsuit — the sixth complaint for sexual assault filed against Combs in six months — alleges Combs met plaintiff Crystal McKinney in 2003 after an unidentified fashion designer invited her to a dinner at Cipriani Downtown during Men’s Fashion Week. According to the lawsuit, the male designer carefully crafted McKinney’s look to please Combs and then ordered her to sit directly across from Combs at the table.
“Once seated, Combs made a very public display of coming on to plaintiff in a sexually suggestive manner which continued throughout the dinner,” the filings states. “Throughout their interactions, Combs was flirtatious, bordering on leering, as he leaned across the table towards her. Combs also plied Plaintiff with alcohol throughout the dinner as he repeatedly refilled her glass with wine.”
The lawsuit alleges Combs invited McKinney back to his Manhattan recording studio, and she believed it was safe to join him there because it was a professional setting as opposed to a personal residence. She claims Combs passed her a joint that she believes was laced with a narcotic and then led her to a bathroom as she felt increasingly intoxicated, like “she was floating.”
“In the bathroom, Combs forced himself on plaintiff and began kissing her without her consent,” the lawsuit claims. “Combs, then, shoved her head down to his crotch before commanding her to ‘suck it.’ Plaintiff refused, but Combs pushed her head down onto his phallus and forced her to perform oral sex on him.”
In the filing, McKinney says the assault made her “physically sick” and that she passed out a short time later. She woke up “in shock to find herself in a taxicab heading back to the designer’s apartment,” the paperwork adds.
Reps for Combs did not immediately respond to Rolling Stone‘s request for comment. The new lawsuit arrives after Combs’ former partner Casandra “Cassie” Ventura first sued him for sex trafficking and rape in November. Two more women, Liza Gardner and Joi Dickerson-Neal, sued Combs a week after Ventura’s filing, alleging the music mogul raped them 1990 and 1991 respectively. A fourth woman sued Combs in early December, alleging he lured her to his studio when she was 17 years old and gang raped her with two other men. Music producer Rodney “Lil Rod” Jones sued Combs in February with allegations Combs sexually harassed and assaulted him during his time working on Combs’ latest album.
Combs, 54, issued a blanket denial of the allegations from the four women, including Ventura, in December. He later dismissed Jones’ complaint as a “work of fiction.”
Last week, CNN obtained and aired a harrowing video showing Combs beating Ventura in the hallway of Los Angeles’ InterContinental Hotel in 2016. In the surveillance video, Combs was seen yanking Ventura backwards to the floor, kicking her, stomping on her, and attempting to drag her back to a room.
Combs responded to the video on Sunday, apologizing for the hotel incident in a video posted on his social media. “It’s so difficult to reflect on the darkest times in your life, but sometimes you gotta do that,” Combs said in the apology video. “I was fucked up, I mean I hit rock bottom, and I make no excuses. My behavior on that video is inexcusable. I take full responsibility for my actions in that video. I’m disgusted. I was disgusted then when I did it, and I’m disgusted now. I went and I sought out professional help. Had to go into therapy, go into rehab, had to ask God for his mercy and grace. I’m so sorry, but I’m committed to being a better man each and every day. I’m not asking for forgiveness. I’m truly sorry.”
McKinney’s complaint names Combs, Bad Boy Records, Bad Boy Entertainment, Sean John Clothing, and Universal Music as defendants and says her decades-old claim is viable under New York City’s Gender Motivated Violence Act, which revives claims against any party who “commits, directs, enables, participates in or conspires in the commission of a crime of violence motivated by gender.”
The new lawsuit says sexual assault is an act of gender motivated violence, and that McKinney was “humiliated and traumatized” by the physical attack. She alleges she was “blackballed” in her industry and tipped into a “tailspin of anxiety and depression.”
McKinney says in her complaint that she was moved to step forward when she saw news coverage of the lawsuits from Ventura, Dickerson-Neal, and the others. “She knew she had a moral obligation to speak up,” her filing states. “Plaintiff seeks justice for herself and for any of the other Combs victims.”
