A woman who met Sean “Diddy” Combs while a student at New York City’s Fashion Institute of Technology in the 1990s has become the seventh person in six months to accuse the music mogul of sexual assault.
April Lamprose’s lawsuit against Mr Combs was filed by her attorney Tyrone Blackburn on Thursday in New York State Supreme Court and alleged multiple harrowing sexual assaults between 1995 and the early 2000s.
Ms Lampros, now 51, recalled how her eyes filled with tears during one incident as an “inebriated” Combs grabbed her by the hair, yanked her to her knees, and forced her to perform oral sex on him in a public parking garage in Manhattan as a parking attendant watched, according to the lawsuit obtained by The Independent.
She was in “shock, morally depleted, embarrassed, and in physical agony because of Mr. Combs violently yanking her down to her knees and pulling her hair,” the suit alleged.
Ms Lampros met Combs while she was an intern at Arista, which at the time was the parent company of the rapper’s label Bad Boy Entertainment.
The rapper “love-bombed her” but his advances later “manifested into an aggressive, coercive and abusive relationship based on sex,” according to the complaint, and “there were four terrifying sexual encounters Ms Lampros endured” at the hands of Combs.
When the student attempted to distance herself from the rapper following the alleged assaults, he gave her “gifts and empty promises” before turning “angry, threatening and forceful” and claiming he would destroy her career.
In 1995, Ms Lampros met up with Combs at a bar in New York where she “succumbed to pressure” to drink alcohol after “delusional and violent outbursts.”
Ms Lampros claims she began to feel like the “walls were closing in on her” after sipping her drink and Combs escorted her back to a hotel.
The lawsuit alleges Combs forced himself on Ms Lampros despite her protests. “Ms. Lampros was being raped by Mr. Combs, and she soon passed out,” it says.
In 1996, Combs sexually assaulted Ms Lampros for a third time when he forced her and his ex-girlfriend Kim Porter to take ecstasy and have sex together, the lawsuit alleges. Combs masturbated while he watched the women together before assaulting Ms Lampros, the filing claims.
“Mr. Combs forced the pill down their throats to ensure the pills were swallowed,” the lawsuit alleges. “Mr. Combs hands were so far down Ms. Lampros throat she gagged. He even checked under their tongues.”
He then ordered Ms Lampros and Porter to have sex, warning Lampros that “he could make her lose her job” if she refused, according to the suit.
Ms Lampros says she ended her relationship with Combs two years later. However, he managed to get revenge by calling her boss and demanding she be fired from her job at a SoHo bar, according to the suit.
When she saw him at an event at the Rockefeller Center in the early 2000s he begged to see her again and she allowed him to come to her apartment.
“He showered her with compliments, telling her how good she looked and kept reminiscing about their prior sex life. He then began dropping hints about them having sex,” it alleged.
When Ms Lampros rejected him, suddenly, “out of nowhere,” Combs grabbed her and “began kissing her and touching her against her will,” the complaint alleges. She fought him off and ordered him to leave.
Around this time, Combs was in “a very public relationship” with Jennifer Lopez, the suit alleges. The couple split the following year.
Years later, in 2023, Ms Lampros alleges an unidentified man approached her partner at the time and said he had seen a sex tape of Ms Lampros and Combs years earlier.
She was informed “Mr. Combs apparently recorded them having sex without her knowing and showed it to multiple people,” the filing claims. The video was allegedly filmed in the summer of 1997 without her consent.
The bombshell lawsuit on Thursday was filed under a New York City law that allows accusers to file civil litigation during a limited window even if the alleged events happened long ago.
It comes just days after Combs took “full responsibility” for beating his ex-girlfriend Cassandra “Cassie” Ventura after CCTV video footage of the 2016 incident in a Los Angeles hotel hallway was released.
In the clip, Combs refers to the incident as “one of the darkest times in his life”, saying that he was “f***ed up” and is “disgusted by his actions”.
A lawsuit filed by Ms Ventura in November alleging beatings and abuse was settled a day after it was filed, but Combs is currently facing a string of different civil lawsuits, which have accused him of sex trafficking, sexual abuse and rape.
Combs has vehemently denied all the accusations against him and vowed to “fight for my name, my family and for the truth.” The musician has not been formally charged.
