Sean “P.Diddy” Combs and Dawn Richard perform onstage during the 2010 BET Awards held at the Shrine Auditorium on June 27, 2010, in Los Angeles, California. | Source: Frederick M. Brown / Getty
The attorney for Dawn Richard has revealed that the singer was “terrified” of Diddy while working with the mogul in an interview.
The lawyer representing singer Dawn Richard, who was a former member of two groups created by Diddy, opened up about her client’s experience in an interview last week. Lisa Bloom spoke about Richard being “absolutely terrified” of the mogul and detailed how “he groped and grabbed her body parts, sexually assaulted her, that he not only failed to pay the money that was promised to her but actually prevented her from eating and sleeping during those years – just treated her terribly.”
Richard sued Diddy aka Sean Combs in September, alleging that he threatened to kill her and of “subjecting her to years of inhumane working conditions which included groping, assault, and false imprisonment.” Her lawsuit joined those of two dozen other victims in the wake of Diddy’s settlement last year with Cassie Ventura, another singer, and his ex-partner who Richard claimed she saw being violently assaulted by him. “Dawn Richard, my client, says that when she spoke out about it, tried to get Cassie to speak out…When she complained about it, she was also threatened with physical violence. So [it was] just a really violent, tumultuous atmosphere,” Bloom said to BBC. “And when she spoke out, she says she was threatened with more physical violence. She said Sean Combs had a vicious temper and she was absolutely terrified of him.”
Richard was a member of two girl groups, Danity Kane and Diddy – Dirty Money. The third member of that second group, Kalenna Harper, is the prime witness for prosecutors in the federal government’s case against Diddy charging him with sex trafficking and racketeering. According to federal prosecutors, Diddy called Harper 128 times after Richard filed her lawsuit. Harper would put out a statement shortly afterward stating that her former bandmate’s experiences “are not representative of my experiences, and some do not align with my own truth.”
In the interview, Bloom referred to Harper’s statement saying that she “came out publicly and essentially called my client a liar.” Bloom added: “The strong implication there is that he talked her into making those statements, perhaps gave her money. We don’t know. But that would be witness tampering. That’s what the government argued. The judge agreed and he was denied bail as a result, which he should have been.”
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