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Investigation Discovery’s ‘The Fall of Diddy’ series airs Jan. 27-28 and will stream on Max and discovery+ at the same time.
By Etan Vlessing
Canada Bureau Chief
While rap world star Sean “Diddy” Combs long preferred to be seen by his fans as a hustling music and fashion mogul known for glitzy parties and entourages, various victims who remained silent out of fear of retribution say they long saw him as a bullying, dangerous and unaccountable king of hip-hop’s underbelly since the 1990s.
That is, until Combs’ arrest on sex trafficking and racketeering charges in September 2024.
The new Investigation Discovery docuseries The Fall of Diddy has drawn from Combs’ inner circle and apparent survivors to offer up a series of allegations of assault, abuse and violence at the hands of the billionaire music and fashion mogul. Those claims about violent behavior and illegal activity against Combs come as he sits behind bars at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn and awaits his trial.
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“There’s a lot of people like Puffy in this music business. Exposing Puffy means exposing them,” Rodney ‘Lil Rod’ Jones, a former producer for Bad Boy Records, says during an interview for the series, which is set to air Jan. 27 and Jan. 28 on ID, while also streaming on Max and discovery+.
Jones alleged that Combs, during the making of The Love Album, sexually harassed him.
The four-part docuseries focuses on Combs’ life away from the slick media coverage he enjoyed over the years, where it’s claimed he played by his own rules and would allegedly get violent over even the smallest of personal slights to get what he wanted when he wanted it.
Tim Patterson, a childhood friend of Combs, appears in The Fall of Diddy to argue Combs’ early ambition to become wealthier as he rose the ranks in hip-hop, in part by founding Bad Boy Entertainment, sprang in part from being tormented as a 10-year-old by neighborhood kids.
“Now he’s a product of bullying. He had the presence of someone you could just roll over. And that’s what people tried to do,” Patterson insisted, which at the time didn’t sit well with his mother, Janice Combs.
“He had to make a choice. He had to man up. ‘I’m going to make more than you, I’m going to do more than you. I’m going to be more successful than you, so I can call the shots.’ He was groomed for success,” Patterson added.
But the 2023 lawsuit brought by ex-girlfriend Cassie Ventura (and subsequent video) — which alleged years of rape and abuse that she experienced at the hands of her boyfriend Combs — pulled the curtain back on the media image and brand the music and fashion mogul had long curated for himself.
The picture presented by the ID series is a legacy of abuse or the threat of abuse that dates back to Combs’ years at Howard University, well before he became a billionaire entrepreneur in the making.
The ID series features a disguised woman who recounted, while at Howard University in 1988, witnessing Combs from her dormitory window screaming at a young woman nearby to come outside as he whipped a wall with his belt. “When she came downstairs, timidly and scared and really not knowing what to do, he started beating on her, whipping her with that belt, and she’s taking it,” the young woman said.
Eventually Combs left, with the young woman following behind. Time and again in the ID series, Combs appeared to have escaped accountability as his wealth and success grew, keeping law enforcement at bay. “It was like in the movies,” former Vibe magazine editor-in-chief Danyel Smith declared in the docuseries about Combs’ notorious white parties in the Hamptons, going on to allege violent behavior by the music mogul toward her.
Journalist Mara S. Campo appears in the docuseries to recount rumors of illicit partygoing at Combs’ gatherings. “What we heard, even at the time they were taking place, was there was a lot of debauchery,” she insisted.
Many of Combs’ glitzy parties with A-listers on hand were publicly photographed and chronicled at the time. But behind the scenes, the ID series alleges Combs committed a series of rapes and sexual assaults on women.
Among those speaking out for the first time is Thalia Graves, who appears in an extended interview in the docuseries to allege Combs spiked her drink and violently raped her in the summer of 2001 inside his Bad Boy Records studio, and then threatened her into silence. She remembers eventually being able to escape the studio. “I was terrified. I didn’t want to die,” she told the ID series.
Rather than go to the hospital for medical treatment or report the incident to the police, Graves decided to remain silent, in part because of a call from Combs. “He said, ‘Eh, keep your effing mouth shut!’ And then he hung up the phone,” she said.
Graves in September 2024 first brought a lawsuit against Combs, as echoed in the ID series, claiming she was told a year earlier by an ex-boyfriend that the alleged 2001 rape had been recorded on video for circulation. “Why would somebody record raping somebody and you show it to other people? I was so angry,” Graves questioned.
The ID series also helps raise the curtain on Ventura, whom Combs broke up with in 2018 after she lived through a decade of alleged abuse and violence. Roger Bonds, Combs’ former bodyguard, on camera recalled a 2009 incident in which Ventura was allegedly beat up after a party on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles.
“I was waiting outside and I seen Cassie come out first, and then I see Puff come out, and he was walking fast. And then all of a sudden, I just see him out of nowhere just punch her. And then they started fighting. I said, ‘Yo, get inside the car. You crazy? Are you crazy?’ And then he said, ‘No, no, no,’ and he started kicking her,” Bonds recalled.
The ID series includes other testimony from Combs’ inner circle about Ventura early on being involved with “freak offs” parties where drug taking, notoriously nonconsensual sexual assaults and sex trafficking allegedly took place.
“I’ve seen questionable things, but I never knew exactly what was going on. It’s been times where Cassie and Diddy would just go to the hotel for a weekend, and I would see guys get off the elevator,” Bonds, a bodyguard for Combs from 2003 to 2012, told the ID series.
The Fall of Diddy includes a snippet of harrowing footage from March 5, 2016, that CNN released, where Combs is seen attacking Ventura in a Los Angeles hotel hallway, kicking and shoving her, then dragging her by her sweatshirt before throwing an object at her.
At the time, Combs apologized for his assault on Ventura in the CNN video, as his critics claimed he had attempted to excuse the incident away. But Canadian model and actress Kat Pasion, whose credits include Altered Carbon, The Flash and Nancy Drew, appears in the ID series to help corroborate the vicious abuse and assaults that Ventura allegedly endured and chronicled in her landmark civil suit.
In November 2018, Pasion in the series recalled first agreeing to have a drink with Combs. “It was very positive in the beginning,” she said of her friendship turned romance with Combs.
But in 2021, Pasion recounted an apparently drug-addled Combs emerging from a bedroom bathroom and allegedly attempting to force himself on her. “I just don’t want to like go into details. It wasn’t consensual and he, he, he — I don’t know the person who came out of that bathroom and woke me up,” she recalled.
Pasion claims Combs rang her two weeks after she left his home to threaten her, including by warning he could have her deported back to Canada. “This man is sick. He uses his resources and what he thinks he can do for you and thinks that that can band-aid and solve the horrible things he does to people, because he thinks he’s God,” she declared on camera.
“Karma’s a bitch, and where is he sitting today? Not on a yacht on the Amalfi Coast, I’ll tell you that,” Pasion added as the ID series in the final episode pivoted to the federal three-count indictment against Combs for sex trafficking and racketeering. Those charges, brought in September 2024, include accusations of kidnapping, arson, forced labor and obstruction of justice and have Combs sitting in solitary confinement in a Brooklyn detention center without bail.
“To me, it’s all about power. The industry as a whole can’t keep turning a blind eye to these situations. It’s a lot of people like Puffy in this music business, exposing Puffy means exposing them,” former bodyguard Bonds said in the series.
Jourdan Cha’Taun, Combs’ personal chef from 2007 to 2010 who details workplace harassment and abuse while in his employ, also speaks publicly for the first time as she urged others to follow her example and, throwing off fear, come forward to share their own stories.
“We are taught: no snitching. We’re taught to suppress violence and abuse and so that gives abusers space to thrive. I’m not afraid anymore. Scream it from the mountain top: These people do not have the power that you think they do,” Cha’Taun said.
Also in the docuseries is Natania Griffin, a victim of the infamous 1999 New York City nightclub shooting involving Combs. “I have nine bullet fragments that remain in my face and my head. [Combs] took my peace of mind. He took my sense of safety,” Griffin said.
Combs has denied all the allegations made against him.
His legal team, in response to questions put to them by The Fall of Diddy producers, stated in the docuseries: “Mr. Combs has full confidence in the facts and the integrity of the judicial process. In court the truth will prevail: that the accusations against Mr. Combs are pure fiction.”
In a statement to The Hollywood Reporter on Thursday, Diddy’s attorneys added, “These documentaries are rushing to cash in on the media circus surrounding Mr. Combs. The producers failed to provide sufficient time or details for his representatives to address unsubstantiated claims, many from unidentified participants whose allegations lack context. By withholding this information, they made it impossible for Mr. Combs to present facts to counter these fabricated accusations. This production is clearly intended to present a one-sided and prejudicial narrative. As we’ve said before, Mr. Combs cannot respond to every publicity stunt or facially ridiculous claim.”
11:29 a.m. This story has been updated with a statement to THR from Diddy’s legal team.
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