Column: This is what it took to expose Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs’ abuse of his girlfriend

Thank God for lodge security cameras.

Past week, CNN obtained and broadcast footage of music mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs brutally assaulting a younger woman in the hallway of a posh Los Angeles resort in 2016.

As the video starts, a barefoot younger female is observed fleeing down a corridor toward elevators, stopping to hurriedly set on her sneakers. Moments later, Combs emerges from a room carrying only socks and a white towel wrapped all over his midsection. He chases the female down, throws her to the ground, kicks her, punches her, drags her by her hoodie and hurls a vase at her.

All when deftly managing to keep his towel in position.

The target is R&B singer Cassie, whose true title is Casandra Ventura. In November, she submitted a 35-website page federal lawsuit towards Combs and his label, Terrible Boy Documents, alleging that he had physically and sexually abused her for several years and frequently forced her into encounters with male prostitutes that he watched and recorded.

The lawsuit, which remaining me sensation ill, lays out a disturbing narrative of serious abuse, coerced drug use and sexual perversion over the program of the pair’s 13-yr romance, which commenced in 2005. When they met, she was a 19-year-outdated aspiring singer, although he was a 37-year-previous rap icon and report label govt. He held her future in his arms, and she describes remaining trapped in a traditional cycle of abuse.

For a lot more than a decade soon after he signed Ventura to his label, the fit alleges, Combs orchestrated most factors of her life, often hiding her away in lodges — she alleges one this kind of a few-week remain in Hawaii — so the black eyes and break up lips he inflicted would heal.

Obviously, Combs’ lawyer Ben Brafman feigned outrage at the notion that his consumer was an abuser:

“Mr. Combs vehemently denies these offensive and outrageous allegations,” he told the New York Moments. “For the previous 6 months, Mr. Combs has been subjected to Ms. Ventura’s persistent need of $30 million, less than the danger of crafting a damaging reserve about their romantic relationship, which was unequivocally rejected as blatant blackmail.”

Au contraire, retorted Ventura’s legal professional Douglas Wigdor: “Mr. Combs offered Ms. Ventura 8 figures to silence her and protect against the filing of this lawsuit. She rejected his initiatives.”

It took huge bravery for Ventura to file her lawsuit, which was created possible by New York’s Grownup Survivors’ Act. The regulation gave victims a a single-calendar year window to file lawsuits for sexual misconduct alleged to have happened right before 2019 for which the statute of limits had expired. About 3,000 lawsuits were submitted in advance of the window shut in November, including, most famously, by E. Jean Carroll, who claimed that Donald Trump had raped her in a section retail store dressing space in 1996. A jury located Trump liable for defamation and sexual assault, which the presiding judge claimed was rape by an additional identify.

Surprisingly more than enough offered Combs’ professions of innocence and victimhood, Ventura’s lawsuit was settled confidentially much less than two times soon after it was submitted. At the time, his attorney emphasised that the settlement in no way implied that Combs was guilty.

Other than, arrive on now. The explosive online video perfectly matches several of the allegations designed in Ventura’s lawsuit she doesn’t seem to have been building it up.

The lawsuit alleges that individuals in Combs’ orbit — his attorney, the president of his history label — pressured her to return to him when she experimented with to escape. “Each time Ms. Ventura tried using to run absent,” the lawsuit alleges, “Mr. Combs and his effective community would force her back again to him.”

On Sunday, all way too predictably, a teary Combs posted a video on Instagram.

“I was f—ed up,” he claims. “I strike rock bottom. I bought into going to therapy, likely to rehab. I had to ask God for his mercy and grace. I’m so sorry.”

Me, me, me, me. Not a word about the hell he set Ventura by way of nor even a mention of her title. And in any case, when, just, did he strike rock base and have his epiphany?

Following all, Ventura alleges that in September 2018, far more than two many years after the resort hallway incident, he raped her at her house right after they met for evening meal in Malibu to focus on the finish of their partnership.

Inside of months of Ventura‘s lawsuit, four other lawsuits ended up filed accusing him of sexual assault and other offenses, together with a person by a lady who was in faculty when she alleges that Combs drugged and assaulted her, and a further by a female who was a higher faculty junior when she alleges she was sexual intercourse trafficked and gang raped by Combs and the longtime president of his record label.

It’s unfortunate that Combs can not be prosecuted for what he did to Ventura in that hallway. The Los Angeles County district attorney’s office environment stated it is powerless to act mainly because the statute of restrictions has expired.

But Combs’ problems may be just beginning. In March, his houses in Miami and Los Angeles had been raided by agents of the Office of Homeland Safety, who seized pcs, difficult drives and guns, according to information reports, which explained the raids were being portion of a sexual assault and sexual intercourse trafficking investigation of Combs, a father of 7. He has not been billed with a criminal offense.

Somebody leaked photos of the aftermath of the Holmby Hills raid to TMZ. The rooms looked as if a twister had swept by means of — papers, clothing, children’s footwear and stuffed animals strewn all about. News online video confirmed two of Combs’ grownup young children in handcuffs outdoors.

It was sad, sure, but an apt visible metaphor for the mess Combs has manufactured.

@robinkabcarian