Last week, the world watched as agents of the US Department of Homeland Security dramatically raided two properties – one in Miami and one in Los Angeles – belonging to the music mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs, as part of an ongoing investigation into sex-trafficking allegations.
What fewer people probably knew was that just a couple of weeks earlier, the former hip-hop executive Drew Dixon had tracked down another industry legend, Russell Simmons, to serve him with a defamation lawsuit relating to her own alleged history of abuse at Simmons’s hands.
Dixon sent a process server to the Bali resort where Simmons reportedly lives to serve him with the suit, which was triggered by comments in a December 2023 podcast in which he called Dixon a “liar” and suggested that the several documented sexual assault claims against him, including hers, were motivated by a desire for fame.
The raid and the lawsuit – big news stories that they are – are the culmination of years of tireless work by victims who had to navigate both a legal system and a wider culture that rarely shows up for them.
To put it simply, it looks as if both Combs and Simmons are in big trouble. And this reckoning, belated as it is, shows just how important it is that victims are empowered, both socially and legally, to speak up about abuse – regardless of how much time has passed, or who their alleged abusers are.
Combs’s most recent legal drama (as far as we, the public, know it) began back in November, when his former longtime partner, Cassie Ventura, filed a $30m lawsuit in federal court accusing Combs of a decade-long cycle of violent sexual abuse and trafficking that started when she was just 19 years old.
Combs denied the allegations, and settled the suit a day later for an undisclosed amount. But then other victims – both male and female – came forward with their own disturbing allegations of systematic sexual abuse by Combs and his associates going all the way back to the 90s. And, like many of the other high-profile men entangled in #MeToo accusations, Combs’s house of cards has continued to crumble since.
When it comes to seeking justice, it’s not hard to see why things took so long for many of Combs’s and Simmons’s alleged survivors. Studies have suggested that Black women face a higher risk of being sexually victimized than their white counterparts, yet Black survivors are often hesitant to report their abuse for fear of not being believed. According to the American Psychological Association, for every Black woman who reports a rape, at least 15 do not.
But legal recourses aren’t the only thing that’s needed to play catch-up to these disturbing truths. As a society, we’ve done a terrible job believing and protecting victims of abuse, particularly when they are Black.
Both Dixon and several of Combs’s accusers were young Black people who were navigating the tumultuous boys club that was 90s hip-hop at the time when they say they were abused. Who they are matters, because truth has a ripple effect, and Black victims who have long been silenced also need to see themselves represented in this current reckoning about sexual abuse in the entertainment industry, regardless of how powerful their abusers are.
Many of Combs’s alleged victims are also young Black men, a fact that further complicates the cultural dynamics of understanding, reporting and seeking justice for this kind of systematic sexual abuse. Hip-hop is notoriously homophobic and the culture of silence around sexual abuse that prevails within the industry means that many of his accusers would have been forced to stay silent, had they not felt that their disclosures would be backed up by other victims speaking out at the same time.
Combs is one of the kings of an empire that tends to both despise homosexuality and protect its most powerful. And according to the allegations against him, he weaponized this combination to create an environment where his victims would be not only too traumatized to speak out, but also too afraid of a culture that would stigmatize them for the manner in which they were victimized.
For vulnerable Black victims who have suffered at the hands of powerful abusers, having their day in court has long seemed like a pipe dream. Now, thanks to the bravery of survivors speaking out, that reckoning may no longer feel too far off.
Tayo Bero is a Guardian US columnist
