Decoding the Sex Trafficking Case Against Sean 'Diddy' Combs

Diddy’s indictment turns the typical sex trafficking charge on its head.

Sean "Diddy" Combs is facing federal sex trafficking and racketeering charges. In an indictment unsealed yesterday, prosecutors accuse the music mogul—formerly known as Puff Daddy and P. Diddy—of having "abused, threatened, and coerced women and others around him to fulfill his sexual desires, protect his reputation, and conceal his conduct."

Combs was arrested on Monday and charged with one count of racketeering conspiracy, one count of sex trafficking, and one count of transportation to engage in prostitution. If convicted on either of the first two counts, Combs faces life in prison, as both the racketeering conspiracy charge and the sex trafficking charge carry a maximum sentence of life imprisonment. The sex trafficking charge also carries a mandatory minimum sentence of 15 years.

On Tuesday, Combs pleaded not guilty and was denied bail.

I can't speak to whether the allegations against Combs are true. But reading the indictment, a few things jump out that I can comment on. The first is how—once again—the Mann Act rears its ugly head, making criminal what really should not be a crime. The second is how federal prosecutors are (once again) stretching the application of sex trafficking laws to conduct that goes beyond the sort of actions they were originally pushed to target. And the third is how the racketeering conspiracy charge opens up the government to seizing way more assets than they would otherwise be allowed to seize.

The Mann Act Allegations 

The Mann Act was passed in 1910, during the country's first sex-trafficking panic. Back then, white Americans fretted about what they referred to as "white slavery," in which white girls and women were supposedly being forced into lives of sexual servitude. The idea then (and still prevalent now) was that no woman could possibly choose sex work for herself. So, the White-Slave Traffic Act—now called the Mann Act—banned taking females across state lines for prostitution or other immoral purposes. It also authorized the creation of the FBI.

With the Mann Act, the federal government was empowered to investigate and prosecute cases involving prostitution, something heretofore left up to more local decision making and enforcement. And it hasn't looked back; the Mann Act is still very much enforced today, even though it's since been joined by a host of other federal laws that invite the FBI and Homeland Security Investigations to look into cases involving commercial sex.

Merely transporting someone across state lines to engage in sexual activity should not be a crime. If there's abduction or coercion involved, that is the criminal activity. We don't also need a law criminalizing the mere transportation element. It's like making opening the door to a bank during the commission of a bank robbery its own separate crime.

But the Mann Act lets federal prosecutors charge people whom they don't otherwise have cause to arrest or, in situations like Combs' case, to ratchet up the charges, perhaps in service of producing a plea deal.

Combs is charged with violating the Mann Act for allegedly making "arrangements for women and commercial sex workers to fly to [his] location." The alleged sex workers involved were all men.

The indictment contains no allegation that he forced or coerced these sex workers into anything. But if he arranged for their travel, across state lines and internationally, the feds have him on a Mann Act violation.

Allegations of Sex Parties and Physical Assaults

So what about the other charges? Combs allegedly induced women to participate in sex parties he called "Freak Offs," which the indictment describes as "elaborate and produced sex performances that COMBS arranged, directed, masturbated during, and often electronically recorded." For these parties, Combs would allegedly hire male sex workers for women to hook up with.

So far, so what? The only potential crime in all that is hiring the male sex workers. But soliciting prostitution is not a federal crime (though it is a state or local crime almost everywhere in the country). And it's possible no one involved thought of this as prostitution. According to the indictment, Combs would frequently film the sex acts at these "Freak Offs." Making porn is not illegal if all parties are consenting.

The indictment goes into some detail about these alleged sex parties. But while it's heavy on lurid description, its light on actual criminal acts. It says the parties "sometimes lasted multiple days" and that those involved "typically received IV fluids to recover from the physical exertion." (Neither is illegal.) It says that Combs "distributed a variety of controlled substances to victims" and attributes to Combs a nefarious motive for doing this: "to keep the victims obedient and compliant." But it doesn't say that he forced anyone to do drugs or gave anyone drugs surreptitiously.

Even many of Combs' alleged means of coercing women to participate in these parties are likely legal. They include activities that might well be controlling in certain contexts but not necessarily criminal—things like making "promises of career opportunities," giving them financial support (or threatening to withhold it), "dictating [their] appearance," and "monitoring their medical records."

However, that's not all that Combs is accused of doing. The indictment also says he used "the sensitive, embarrassing, and incriminating recordings that he made during Freak Offs as collateral to ensure the continued obedience and silence of the victims."

And it accuses him of having assaulted some of the women, "striking, punching, dragging, throwing objects at, and kicking them."

Several women have previously accused Combs of sexual assault. And at least one video was made public last fall of Combs punching and kicking Casandra Ventura, an R&B singer who goes by Cassie. (Ventura sued him in civil court, saying Combs had raped her, physically assaulted her, and forced her to have sex with other men while he filmed. The suit was settled a day after Ventura filed it.)

Breaking It Down

So let's break this down.

We've got one charge for something that should not be a crime (transportation of willing adults). Even if Combs did this, it should not matter, morally or legally.

Then we've got allegations of the sort of violence and abuse that definitely should be illegal—albeit not the purview of the federal government. If Combs did these things, they are both morally abhorrent and should be prosecutable under state criminal laws.

Then we've got this third, murkier business—the sex parties—that it's hard to know what to make of.

And this murky third element is the thing that the federal government really needs to justify this case. It's the area where the indictment has devoted the most attention, and also where the lines between legal adult activity and criminal sex trafficking are blurry.

Sex Trafficking?

According to the indictment, Combs used his "power and prestige," along with "the pretense of a romantic relationship," to "lure" women to him. So…he was a rich and famous dude who women were drawn to and he maybe used that to his sexual advantage? That may be cad-like behavior, but it is not (nor should it be) illegal.

The indictment goes on to say that after luring women into his "orbit," Combs "used force, threats of force, and coercion, to cause victims to engage in extended sex acts with male commercial sex workers."

These allegations turn typical sex trafficking claims on their head.

In a typical scenario, a trafficker is accused of using force or coercion to cause someone to have sex for money and then to keep some or all of that money for themselves. It's the person paid for sex who is being abused or exploited and the trafficker who is financially benefiting.

But in this case, the alleged trafficker—Combs—is accused of paying money to consenting sex workers and using force or coercion to find sex partners for them. It's not the sex workers who are allegedly being trafficked but the people whom the sex workers are paid to have sex with. (There's a gender swap from your typical case, where the alleged sex workers are female and those paying them male, which opens up a whole can of worms about gendered perceptions of sexual agency that we won't get into now…)

Is that really sex trafficking? It seems like prosecutors are once again stretching the definition.

Sex trafficking statutes were enacted with a promise of stopping forced prostitution. But prosecutors and people bringing civil lawsuits have found all sorts of creative ways to use them, hurling sex trafficking allegations at social media websites, software companies, and sex workers themselves, as well as people engaged in a wide array of odd or bad behavior adjacent to sex (see, for instance, some of the NXIVM cases, or the investigation into Matt Gaetz.)

Combs may well have engaged in some nasty, abusive, and criminal behavior. But things can be nasty, abusive, and even criminal without necessarily being sex trafficking.

To me, this feels like a case where federal law enforcement is bringing sex trafficking charges to get attention and justify its involvement when maybe more mundane charges would be more relevant.

The "Conspiracy"

The Combs case seems especially weak when it comes to the alleged conspiracy.

According to the feds, Combs' whole business enterprise—his record label, his product portfolio, and his media company, and all the rest—are a "criminal enterprise" that helped Combs engage in sex trafficking and other crimes. From the indictment:

Members and associates of the Combs Enterprise, including high-ranking supervisors, security staff, household staff, personal assistants, and other Combs Business employees, facilitated the Freak Offs by, among other things, booking hotel rooms for the Freak Offs; stocking the hotel rooms in advance with the required Freak Off supplies, including controlled substances, baby oil, lubricant, extra linens, and lighting; cleaning the hotel rooms after the Freak Offs to try to mitigate room damage; arranging for travel for victims, commercial sex workers, and COMBS to and from Freak Offs; resupplying COMBS with requested supplies; delivering large sums of cash to COMBS to pay the commercial sex workers; and scheduling the delivery of IV fluids.

OK, but…if Combs' staff thought he was throwing consensual sex parties or making legal pornographic videos, then most of these alleged actions are just normal and legal activities. There may be elements of illegality in there—procuring illegal drugs, for instance (which also should be legal, but that's another argument for a separate time). But things like purchasing or possessing drugs could easily be charged as stand-alone crimes without having to draw up a whole racketeering conspiracy case.

The most damning allegation is that "members and associates of the Combs Enterprise helped conceal the violence and abuse by, among other things, assisting COMBS in monitoring and preventing victims from leaving locations, such as hotels or COMBS' residences. These occasions included instances in which a victim was required to remain in hiding-sometimes for several days at a time-to recover from injuries COMBS inflicted, without being publicly observed."

But how much (moral or legal) culpability to assign such staff members if this is true depends on what they knew about the situation. How was the women "required" to stay put and how willingly did they stay put? How apparent were their injuries and how were staff told that they occurred? This is, ostensibly, someone they saw as a romantic partner of Combs and someone who kept coming back. There's a world in which things happened in the worst of all possible lights, but it's also possible staff members didn't quite know what was happening (or, of course, that it didn't happen as the feds say it did at all). The complaint provides no real details.

The vagueness and broadness of the conspiracy element suggest the government may have an ulterior motive here. Charging random employees for buying drugs is not lucrative or accolade earning. Charging Combs for any discrete acts of violence may get attention but doesn't allow the feds to attack all the assets involved in his wildly successful businesses.

But by trying to make this a sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy case that involves all of Combs' businesses, it opens up the possibly of seizing all sorts of money and assets involved in them.

The indictment ends by saying that Combs shall forfeit to the United States any and all money, property, and other assets belonging to Bad Boy Records, Combs' Enterprises, and Combs Global that were in any way tied to the alleged criminal acts. It also stipulates that if it can't seize particular assets involved in the crimes, for whatever reason, then the government can claim other property, money, and assets belonging to Combs and his businesses.

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More Sex & Tech News

• The Rhode Island sex worker rights group COYOTE RI has released a wonderful new book that compiles the group's past decade of research into how government policies are affecting the lives of sex workers. Sex Work Policy: Participatory Action Research By and For Sex Worker "brings together the lived experiences and recommendations of over 2000 US sex workers and sex trafficking survivors who participated in six surveys to create an essential policy primer for activists and policymakers," the group explains. As I said in a blurb for the book, it "should be required reading for anyone proposing policies that affect sex workers or anyone writing about sex work." But it's also a good (and accessible) read for anyone who wants to know more about how public policies "protecting" sex workers are actually affecting their lives.

• ProPublica delves into a heartbreaking story of how an abortion ban led to a preventable death in Georgia:

Amber Nicole Thurman suffered from a grave infection that her suburban Atlanta hospital was well-equipped to treat.

She'd taken abortion pills and encountered a rare complication; she had not expelled all of the fetal tissue from her body. She showed up at Piedmont Henry Hospital in need of a routine procedure to clear it from her uterus, called a dilation and curettage, or D&C.

But just that summer, her state had made performing the procedure a felony, with few exceptions. Any doctor who violated the new Georgia law could be prosecuted and face up to a decade in prison.

Instead of doing the procedure right away, her doctors hesitated for nearly a full day, making sure her condition was life-threatening enough to justify the operation. They waited too long.

• Virginia Postrel critiques Christine Rosen's new antitech tome, The Extinction of Experience.

• The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is urging the Supreme Court to side with the Free Speech Coalition and its fellow plaintiffs in a case challenging a Texas age verification law that applies to online purveyors of adult content. In a brief submitted Monday, the ACLU argues that "this is a straightforward case" and the Texas law is unconstitutional.

• In case you missed it last week: A North Dakota judge overturned the state's strict abortion ban. "The North Dakota Constitution guarantees each individual, including women, the fundamental right to make medical judgments affecting his or her bodily integrity, health and autonomy, in consultation with a chosen health care provider free from government interference," wrote Burleigh County District Judge Bruce Romanick in his decision. "Unborn human life, pre-viability, is not a sufficient justification to interfere with a woman's fundamental right."

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