Lawsuits have been filed against Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs and Anti-Flag frontman Justin Sane ahead of today’s deadline for submitting new legal claims under New York state's Adult Survivors Act.
The act allows victims of sexual assault or abuse to file new legal proceedings even if alleged incidents occurred sufficiently long ago that a legal claim would usually be barred by the statute of limitations.
Combs was sued under the act last week by his former partner Cassie Ventura. However, that litigation was settled the day after it was filed. But he now faces another lawsuit from a woman who says he sexually assaulted her in 1991.
Joi Dickerson-Neal claims that she knew Combs via mutual acquaintances and had appeared in one of his music videos. She says that, while spending a day with the rapper in 1991, he drugged her and then, having taken her to a place where he was staying, sexually assaulted her. She adds that she later learned he had recorded the incident and shared the video with acquaintances.
A legal rep for Combs said in a statement to the BBC that Dickerson-Neal's allegations were "made up and not credible", and that her lawsuit "is purely a money grab and nothing more".
Justin Sane - real name Justin Geever - has been sued by Kristina Sarhadi, who earlier this year spoke to the podcast Enough about a violent encounter she had with an unnamed punk singer back in October 2010. Anti-Flag abruptly split up shortly after that interview was published.
According to Rolling Stone, in her lawsuit Sarhadi says that Geever invited her back to his motel room so that he could play her an unreleased song. Once there, he restrained and strangled her, and forced her to perform oral sex on him. He ignored her repeated pleas for him to stop and she only escaped after the musician passed out.
As the various lawsuits brought against musicians and music executives under the Adult Survivors Act go through the motions, it will be interesting to see the extent to which consideration is given to how the wider music industry tolerated and facilitated this kind of conduct.
One of the lawyers working for Sarhadi - Dr Ann Olivarius - is quoted by Rolling Stone as saying: “I predict that in five years the music industry will be viewed the same way as the Catholic Church or the Boy Scouts - a powerful force that also enabled and shielded sexual predators for decades”.
