As beleaguered music mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs sits in jail awaiting trial on federal sex crime charges, he and his former bodyguard are facing new sexual assault allegations in a new lawsuit.
In a complaint and demand for jury trial filed on Tuesday, Sept. 24, in the U.S. District Court in the Southern District of New York and obtained by PEOPLE, a woman named Thalia Graves has alleged that Combs, 54, and his head of security at the time, Joseph Sherman, raped her in the summer of 2001 at the Bad Boy Records studio in New York City.
Graves alleges that the sexual assault was recorded on video and that she has had suicidal thoughts ever since, the complaint claims.
At a press conference about the lawsuit on Tuesday afternoon, Graves sobbed as she said that the alleged rape left her feeling “worthless and isolated.”
What she has allegedly experienced “goes beyond just physical harm caused by and during the assault,” she said.
“It’s a pain that reaches into your very core,” she said, adding, “this has taken a toll on my mental health,” which she says has included PTSD, flashbacks, nightmares and thoughts of suicide.
She ended her remarks by saying, “I’m glad Diddy is locked up but that’s a temporary feeling of relief.”
Her attorney, Gloria Allred, said Graves will be seeking compensatory and punitive damages in an amount “to be determined at trial.”
In the complaint, Graves says she was 25 and dating one of Combs’ employees at the time, which Combs “exploited to lure (her) into meeting him and Sherman alone,” it claims.
“Once they successfully sequestered [her], Combs and Sherman gave her a drink “likely laced with a drug that eventually caused her to lose consciousness,” it alleges.
She awoke, the complaint alleges, “to find herself bound and restrained.”
She claims she was raped “anally and vaginally,” according to the complaint.
She says she never reported the incident to the authorities because she feared what Combs and Sherman would do to her, the complaint claims.
For years, she says, she suffered from depression and anxiety, the complaint says.
Her anxiety skyrocketed when she learned in November 2023 that Combs and Sherman had allegedly recorded the “horrific rape,” according to the complaint.
She claims that Combs and Sherman “continued to show the video of the rape to others over the years and through to the present and/or sold the video as pornography.”
The complaint details what happened during the alleged rape, stating that when she regained consciousness and screamed, Sherman allegedly “slammed her face down on what was apparently a pool table,” per the complaint.
During the alleged attack, she threw up on the table but “Combs was undeterred,” the complaint says. “He wiped himself off….” and continued to rape her, it alleges.
She says she considered suicide as a result of the alleged rape and what happened in the aftermath, per the complaint.
Combs is currently in jail after he was arrested on Sept. 16 and charged with sex trafficking, racketeering and transportation to engage in prostitution. He pleaded not guilty, but has been denied bail twice.
His attorney, Marc Agnifilo, says his client is innocent.
“He’s going to fight this with all of his energy and all of his might and the full confidence of his lawyers and I expect a long battle with a good result for Mr. Combs,” Agnifilo said outside court on Sept. 17.
A hearing for Combs is set for Oct. 9 at 2 p.m.
