Sean 'Diddy' Combs accused of 'four terrifying sexual encounters' in 8th new lawsuit
An eighth person has filed a lawsuit against Sean “Diddy” Combs, accusing the embattled mogul of sexual assault, battery, negligent infliction of emotional distress and violation of the victims of gender-motivated violence protection law, according to court documents reviewed by The Times.
April Lampros, whose lawyers submitted the lawsuit Thursday in New York, is the seventh person to accuse Combs of sexual assault in recent months. She also sued Bad Boy Records and Arista Records, a subsidiary of Sony Music Entertainment, for allegedly enabling Combs' behavior.
His representatives did not immediately respond Friday to The Times’ request for comment.
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In her lawsuit, Lampros said she endured "four terrifying sexual encounters" with Combs in the mid-1990s and early 2000s. She was dissuaded from talking about her relationship with Combs because "he did not want anyone to know he was seeing her because she is a white woman," the lawsuit said.
Lampros met Combs in early 1994 when she was a college student at New York's Fashion Institute of Technology, according to the lawsuit. Upon learning of her interest in the fashion industry, Combs offered to mentor her, promising work opportunities.
Combs "love-bombed" her, she alleged, by repeatedly sending gifts and flowers and inviting her to events. The "kind gestures" then spun into an "aggressive, coercive and abusive relationship based on sex," the lawsuit said.
In 1995, Lampros met up with Combs and an unnamed woman at a bar in New York's SoHo neighborhood, the suit alleges. The group "lightly drank" throughout the evening, which Lampros said she felt pressured to do so because of Combs' "delusional and violent outbursts."
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After a "few sips of one drink," Lampros said in the filing, she "began to feel uneasy." The group left the bar and headed to the Millennium Hotel, where Combs allegedly "forced himself on top of her."
Despite her pleas, Combs raped Lampros, the lawsuit alleged. The next morning, it said, she was "nude, sore and confused," and quickly left the building.
Combs "lured" Lampros back by leveraging his music industry influence, according to the suit. The second incident allegedly occurred months later in a parking garage near Combs' Manhattan apartment, where the "slightly inebriated" mogul forced Lampros to her knees, the lawsuit said.
Combs "quickly unzipped his pants" and demanded Lampros perform oral sex on him as a parking garage attendant watched nearby, the suit said. When Lampros attempted to distance herself from Combs, it said, he "immediately switched his approach and became angry, threatening and forceful."
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"She felt that if she disobeyed him, he would take away her dreams of pursuing a career in this world," the suit contended. "Mr. Combs would also threaten to blacklist her in the industry if she tried to mess with him in any way."
In 1996, Combs "forced" ecstasy pills down the throats of Lampros and Kim Porter, one of his former girlfriends, after a night out drinking. He then "demanded" that Porter have sex with Lampros, the lawsuit alleged. (Porter died of pneumonia in 2018.)
"Ms. Lampros knew that she had to comply because she had witnessed what happens with someone defies Mr. Combs," the document said. Combs allegedly masturbated as he watched the women, then raped Lampros, the lawsuit said.
Lampros said she cut ties with Combs around 1998, having "suffered enough." The two crossed paths toward the end of 2000 or early 2001at a Rockefeller Center event, where he told her he missed her. At that time, Combs was dating Jennifer Lopez, who is now married to Ben Affleck.
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Combs allegedly called Lampros multiple times that day, asking her to come to his apartment. The communication continued days later, the filing said, resulting in Lampros "reluctantly and regrettably" inviting Combs to her apartment to "hear what he had to say." At the apartment, Lampros said, Combs apologized for his past behaviors, then made sexual advances, which she rejected.
"Out of nowhere," the lawsuit alleged, Combs "violently grabbed" Lampros and "touched her against her will." Lampros said she fought him off and ordered him to leave, speaking at volume so his bodyguard posted outside the door would hear.
“I’m confident that justice will prevail and the veil will be removed so no other woman will have to endure what I did,” Lampros told CNN in a statement Thursday.
In a lawsuit filed earlier this week, former model Crystal McKinney also accused Combs of a sexual assault. In addition to numerous sexual-assault accusations that date back decades, Combs is at the center of a federal inquiry into sex-trafficking allegations.
Combs publicly apologized Sunday after CNN last week released footage of him violently attacking his ex Casandra "Cassie" Ventura in a Century City hotel in 2016. Ventura accused Combs of sexual assault, among other allegations, in a civil lawsuit last year.
A day later, the two reached a settlement, which Combs' lawyers said was not an admission of wrongdoing.
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
