The sexual-assault allegations against Sean “Diddy” Combs are now extending to other celebrities: This week, a woman who accused Combs of raping her when she was a 13-year-old attending a 2000 VMAs after-party in New York City amended her lawsuit to include Jay-Z as a defendant. Jane Doe claims the rapper, whose real name is Shawn Carter, assaulted her alongside Combs while an unnamed female celebrity looked on. Carter denied the allegations and accused Doe’s lawyer, Tony Buzbee, of blackmail while demanding the accuser reveal her identity. Combs, who is currently facing dozens of other lawsuits accusing him of sexual violence, as well as federal sex-trafficking charges, has also denied the allegations against him.
I spoke with Judie Saunders, a former Brooklyn prosecutor and an attorney with more than 20 years of experience representing victims of sexual violence, including children, clergy-abuse survivors, and elite athletes, about the latest allegations against Combs and Carter. While she couldn’t speak to whether we can expect other unnamed celebrities involved in complaints against Combs to be identified, she explained why the anonymity Carter’s and Comb’s lawyers are trying to undercut is an important tool in these cases and why victims may choose to file civil complaints rather than criminal ones.
Let’s talk about Diddy. These allegations are now bigger than him: This week, a Jane Doe amended her complaint accusing Jay-Z of being the “unnamed male celebrity” who assaulted her alongside Diddy when she was 13.
We have to understand that, at this point, it is a complaint. It is an allegation, and we can’t forget that there is a process. The process is undeniably weighted against survivors of sexual abuse, both historically through the law and public opinion. I have cases where prosecutions have been declined, they have begun and been concluded, without survivors even knowing or being contacted. It is not a fiction to say that survivors face significant obstacles in bringing these types of cases.
But my impression is: Let’s wait. Let’s just slow down with the court of public opinion. If in fact these allegations by this young woman against Mr. Carter and Mr. Combs can’t be proven, the process will vet that out. Filing the complaint is step one. After, you’re going to have the discovery. There’s a number of tools that legal professionals use, and Mr. Combs and Mr. Carter are not going to want for skilled attorneys who know how to exploit and leverage the legal tools, their networking capital, their relationships within the legal profession to give their clients the best representation. Discovery will include such things as depositions. There’s going to be several tools that these very high-powered law firms will use for their clients, including hired and retained media professionals on staff whom they will also use and leverage to frame the issues and shake the case. So there is a process. Let’s let the due process that these individuals will use, let them use that to vet and to see whether these victims can prove their cases.
A sticking point in all of this has been the anonymity of the accusers. Jay-Z has demanded the accuser reveal her identity, and Diddy has also asked prosecutors to reveal the accusers in his criminal sex-trafficking case. Can you talk about why someone may choose to file a complaint or talk to the Feds anonymously?
I’ve had several cases where the client is filing anonymously. Sometimes they would prefer not to; they want to be known. However, we don’t live in a culture that has supported survivors. We’ve lived in a culture that engages in heavy victim-blaming. If we did not have this stigma, individuals could name themselves. In what other area of the law is it so automatic and reflexive for the plaintiffs to be blamed? If I was bringing a case of a breach of contract between two companies, very rarely would you have the public or individuals coming up in arms saying that, “Well, Business A that brought the complaint, they should be ashamed of themselves. What were those business professionals doing when they signed that deal or the contract was entered? What kind of past business people have been in their prior partnerships or dealings?” You would laugh if you saw such a thing. It takes so much redirection to get individuals to look back at the perpetrator and get them to say, “What was the perpetrator doing?”
It’s very hard to litigate these cases because you keep having to remind individuals to stay on task and to look at the perpetrator instead of the victim. Another reason why individuals want to remain anonymous is because of the undeniable shame that accompanies sexuality and issues of sex. Victims of all ages, especially those who were violated when they’re young, often wonder, What did I do to contribute to this? Because of that, they stay silent and are forced to move about their life without even their closest loved ones knowing. Some of them know that if they put their names at the top of a court case, that they will be labeled and they will be viewed differently and that will be a further traumatization. A fact that no one brings out is that — even in cases where I’m filing under my client’s initials or under a John Doe or Jane Doe — the actual client’s name is exchanged under a confidential agreement with opposing counsel. The opposing counsel and defendant will get that information. The uproar about this being an individual sneaking into court and under a cloak of darkness with the defendant never finding out who they are — that’s a wild mischaracterization. We are required as plaintiffs’ counsels to reveal the identity of our clients. We do it under a protective order in the course of the lawsuit.
In one of the cases, a judge recently said one Jane Doe who accuses Diddy of trafficking and raping her as a teen must use her real name if she wants to continue her civil lawsuit. What do you make of that?
I can’t speak to the particular facts of this case, meaning that I don’t know if the identity has been exchanged. What I can say is that I do not agree that, even if there is good cause shown, the name of the survivor should be publicly revealed. We still are not in a system that provides unbiased litigating of these cases to individuals who have endured sexual violence, assault, abuse, molestation. Because of that, we need this tool of anonymity. This can have a real chilling effect on survivors. They’re watching these cases, and it will impact whether they continue to come forward against powerful and abusive authority figures.
Other than challenging anonymity, Diddy’s team has also been looking for discrepancies in the accusers’ stories. For example, one of the John Does did an interview with CNN in which there were inconsistencies between what he told the outlet and what his lawsuit said. Could you speak to why there may be discrepancies generally when it comes to sexual-abuse cases? How do you account for that?
Inconsistencies is a big word. Inconsistencies are exploited to the extent that they focus on portions of an account that are not essential to the actual act of sexual violence. Can a survivor be mistaken about a date? About some part of their complaint? Absolutely. Are credible survivors mistaken about the actual details? No.
Could the survivor say it happened at one o’clock and it was really the next day at two o’clock? Yeah, that’s an inconsistency. Are they going to be inconsistent about what happened, what this person did to their body? No. This is a very common practice to try to discredit people early on, but we bring in medical professionals to explain the inconsistencies.
There has to be a due process in which the litigation will vet out individuals who are not credible, but that process is biased against survivors in so many ways. I’ve had clients who try to first use the criminal process. Law enforcement are gatekeepers to that. Often, they are not doing full investigations; they dismiss these complaints without letting the process develop, without believing survivors. That’s why individuals then come to people like myself and try to access the civil process.
It’s really interesting that you bring up law enforcement. There was a New York Times story last year about how freezing up during an assault is an involuntary trauma response. The article also went into how law enforcement thinks victims are lying based on their physiological responses and what they thought to be inconsistencies in their accounts.
When you are sitting across from a law-enforcement individual who may not be trained or may not have the resources, if they pick up a purported “inconsistency” in your story, that’s it. The investigation’s over. And then you know what the problem is? Those biases, that failure to investigate, it’s encapsulated and memorialized in a police report, and the entire process is downhill from there. The survivor senses it. Just because you’re the victim of sexual violence doesn’t mean you all of a sudden lose your intelligence. You understand from both verbal and nonverbal cues when you’re not being believed. I have seen cases in which an individual is telling me, “I knew when I was sitting in that hospital room, I knew when I was sitting in that police station — I knew the minute they stopped believing me. And that’s when I shut down.”
The wave of civil suits against Diddy started when his ex-partner Cassie (whose legal name is Cassie Ventura) filed a federal complaint last year. The aftermath seems to have triggered a criminal investigation and now he is facing charges. Can you talk about the impact civil lawsuits can have on criminal cases and vice versa?
It is reasonable to believe that the criminal investigation into Mr. Combs was underway for several months, if not years. The public would not have known about it. Now, I’m speculating, but Ms. Ventura’s filing of that lawsuit may have expedited the more public exposure on the criminal side, and prosecutors may have decided that this was the time to publicly disclose that investigation.
There is an interplay between the two worlds, especially when you have allegations involving sexual violence. They can work in conjunction with each other. The resources that you have as a criminal prosecutor are vast. When I was a prosecutor, I had at my disposal the police force, secret indictments, subpoenaing witnesses. You have some of those same tools as a civil litigator, but you have many more resources as a prosecutor. The one advantage from a civil perspective is you as an attorney are acting as an advocate for a particular client. When you’re working as a prosecutor, you don’t bring the case on behalf of the individualized victim, you bring it on behalf of the state. When you hire a civil attorney, they are navigating these very opaque systems on your behalf, providing you with the information you need. Many times, prosecutors don’t have the ability and time to pick up the phone and advise you every step of the way, just because of their caseload.
Sometimes as a civil litigator, you may get information whether you’re using a private investigator that may not be known to the criminal prosecutor. There’s evidence shared between the two. But when there’s a criminal prosecution going on at the same time as a civil case, the criminal prosecutor will not share that information. Many times, I will encourage a client to file a criminal complaint, depending on the statute of limitations.
Diddy hasn’t countersued his accusers, but his lawyers criticized attorney Tony Buzbee for soliciting more than 100 clients through a 1-800 hotline. What do you think of attorneys finding clients in this way? Is it common?
Just like any profession, attorneys use social media and other marketing tools to obtain clients. Practicing law, you are also running a business, so it is not unheard of.
Jay-Z filed his own John Doe lawsuit last month before he was identified in the 13-year-old accuser’s lawsuit, accusing Buzbee of extorting him by filing false assault claims against him. What do you make of that? How frequently does someone who is accused of sexual violence file this type of legal action?
I am seeing a trend where individuals who are facing allegations of sexual violence use the law as a sword. They are leveraging their access to the courts to try to stymie full due process of the underlying complaint. Instead of letting that litigation run its course — through discovery, through mediation or a trial — you are seeing these preemptory tools. It’s either attacks directly on the survivor (just another form of shame, by the way) or on the practitioner, to tie them up in litigation. Those are attempts by the defense to put the attorney on their heels so they can’t focus on the underlying claim because they now have to enter into litigation regarding themselves. That’s a trend that has become much more common post Me Too, and it is disturbing. It’s meant to incite fear. It’s meant to confuse the jury. It’s meant to continue the pattern of victim-blaming, continue the pattern of retaliation and retribution.
This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.
