A woman who accused billionaire rap moguls Sean “Diddy” Combs and Shawn Carter, known as Jay-Z, of sexually assaulting her when she was 13 years old admitted to inconsistencies in her account during an interview with NBC News.
“I have made some mistakes” the now-38-year-old Alabama woman, who remains anonymous, told NBC News in an interview published on Friday night. The inconsistencies included key corroborating witnesses and images of the rappers’ whereabouts on the night of the alleged attack that differ from the accuser’s claims. But the woman said she stands by her allegations of rape by Combs and Carter, both 55, which she said happened at an after-party in 2000 for the MTV Video Music Awards in New York City.
The admission comes just days after the woman refiled her October sexual assault lawsuit against Combs on Sunday to include Carter as a co-defendant. The amended complaint this week sparked a flurry of legal actions from Carter, including a motion to reveal the accuser’s name and a letter to a New York courthouse noting his intention to have the complaint dismissed. The rapper also posted a lengthy response to the lawsuit on social media on Sunday, denying the allegations and accusing the plaintiff’s lawyer, Tony Buzbee, of blackmail.
Combs, who is facing more than 35 sexual assault lawsuits, has repeatedly denied all of the accusations against him while he remains in a Brooklyn jail ahead of his May 5 trial on federal charges of sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy.
Buzbee, a personal injury lawyer who has filed multiple lawsuits against Combs, said he is continuing to investigate the woman’s story.
Among the inconsistencies cited during the NBC interview were the woman’s claims about specific celebrities she talked to at the after-party. She said she spoke to musicians Fred Durst and Benji Madden, recalling a conversation about the Good Charlotte member’s “Last Supper” tattoo. “I have a religious background, so it was just something to talk about,” the woman said in the interview.
But NBC News said a representative for Madden confirmed that Benji as well as his twin brother Joel were touring in the Midwest at that time and did not attend the 2000 VMAs.
The woman also had claimed that after the sexual assault, she ran out of the residence to a nearby gas station where her father picked her up. But her father told NBC News that he has no recollection of picking her up that night, which would have been more than a five-hour drive from Rochester, New York, which is where the woman said they lived at the time.
“I feel like I would remember that, and I don’t,” he said in the interview. “I have a lot going on, but I mean, that’s something that would definitely stick in my mind.”
NBC News also claimed it obtained images from the night of the awards show of Carter and Combs attending an after-party at Lotus nightclub in Manhattan.
While the rappers’ “whereabouts for the entire evening are unclear,” NBC News reported that the now-closed building that housed Lotus does not match the description of “a large white residence with a gated U-shaped driveway” that the woman provided in her suit.
Carter reiterated his criticisms of Buzbee in a social media post, responding to the accuser’s NBC News interview. “Today’s investigative report proves this ‘attorney’ Buzbee filed a false complaint against me in the pursuit of money and fame,” the rapper wrote on Instagram on Friday. “This incident didn’t happen and yet he filed it in court and doubled down in the press. True Justice is coming. We fight FROM victory, not FOR victory. This was over before it began. This 1-800 lawyer doesn’t realize it yet, but, soon.”
In an additional statement to The Washington Post, Carter’s attorney, Alex Spiro, said: “It is stunning that a lawyer would not only file such a serious complaint without proper vetting, but would make things worse by further peddling this false story in the press. We are asking the Court to dismiss this frivolous case today, and will take up the matter of additional discipline for Mr. Buzbee and all the lawyers that filed the complaint.”
Combs’s legal team also responded to the NBC News interview: “This week, a lawyer admitted that over 50 people falsely claimed to be victims. Yesterday, for the second time this week, a Buzbee plaintiff has been exposed. This is the beginning of the end of this shameful money grab.”
In an email, Buzbee said his team will continue to investigate the woman’s claims.
“Jane Doe’s case was referred to our firm by another law firm, who vetted it prior to sending it to us. Our client remains fiercely adamant that what she has stated is true, to the best of her memory,” he wrote. “We will continue to vet her claims and collect corroborating data to the extent it exists. Because we have interrogated her intensely, she has even agreed to submit to a polygraph. I’ve never had a client suggest that before. In any event, we always do our best to vet each claim made, just as we did in this case. This has been extremely distressing for her, to the point she has experienced seizures and had to seek medical treatment due to the stress.”
The civil complaint, which was first filed against Combs in the Southern District of New York in October, initially referred to Carter as “Celebrity A.” It alleges that the plaintiff was 13 years old when a friend dropped her off near Radio City Music Hall in New York City so she could try to attend the VMAs in 2000.
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NBC News, which obtained the name and birth date of the friend, who would have been 20 at the time, said it could not corroborate this account. “That person appears to have since died,” the outlet said in its report. “NBC News’ attempts to reach the person’s relatives were unsuccessful.”
While she failed to gain entry to the awards show that night, the plaintiff claims she chatted up limo drivers who were parked outside the venue. She said one of them invited her to an after-party, telling her that “Combs liked younger girls” and said she “fit what Diddy was looking for.”
Later that night, the suit alleges, the driver took her to the party. Once inside, the plaintiff said, she was prompted to sign a document, which she did not read but now believes to have been a nondisclosure agreement.
During the party, she said she recognized many celebrities, observed “widespread drug use” and accepted a drink from one waitstaff that made her feel “woozy” and “light-headed,” the complaint reads. She claims she walked to an empty bedroom to lie down and, “Soon after, Combs entered the room, along with defendant Carter and a female celebrity, ‘Celebrity B.’”
The suit alleges that Combs and Carter took turns raping her as the female celebrity watched. After Combs attempted another sexual assault, the plaintiff claims that she fought back, grabbed her clothes and ran out of the residence to a nearby gas station where her father picked her up.
“We rode home in silence. He didn’t ask me what happened. He didn’t ask me what I did or where I was,” she told NBC News. When the media outlet asked about her father’s account, the woman said it’s possible he had misremembered.
Buzbee told NBC News: “We agree he states he doesn’t remember. … His daughter explains that he was in no state to remember during that point in time due to personal issues he was having then. We are talking about a time frame more than twenty years ago.”
The woman said she never told anyone about the alleged assault and experienced severe depression in the years that followed, eventually dropping out of school, experiencing homelessness and suffering a head injury. She and her father also told NBC News that she was raped later in life.
She said she now has a son and a daughter, and served in the Army National Guard, received her high school diploma and “got my Christian counselling certification so that I can help people who have gone through what I’ve gone through.”
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