Sean “Diddy” Combs’ alleged history of domestic violence has been traced back to his collegiate days in the wake of video footage surfacing of him brutally beating and stomping his former girlfriend Cassandra “Cassie” Ventura in a Los Angeles hotel.
The Bad Boy record label founder is not only a defendant in eight civil suits alleging numerous abuses, including racketeering, sex trafficking, and other criminal acts; he is now the subject of a new Rolling Stone investigative exposé, digging into 30 years of his terroristic reign from the campus to his now-shattered image as a music and entertainment mogul.
The editorial piece includes stories from more than 30 people. One of which paints him as a boisterous party promoter who was enrolled at Howard University and known for having “fits of rage” making him capable of flying “off the handle” when he did not get his way.
A former student claimed that he struck fear in a girlfriend when he would pop up outside of her English class, tapping on the window to summon her. “She would tense up. … He just had a weird control thing. I felt like she was fearful,” they said.
Combs attended the university for two years before dropping out in 1990, during his sophomore year, to further his music career while interning at UpTown Records. In 2014, he was presented with an honorary doctorate in humanities from Howard. Last year, he donated $1 million to his alma mater after pledging to do so while accepting the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2022 BET Awards.
Diddy’s “25/75 Rule” resurfaces amid Cassie video:
— Kollege Kidd (@KollegeKidd) May 29, 2024
“If I'm in a relationship with you, 25% of your time, you're gonna just feel like, ‘Aw, man, I hate being here. …But then there's 75% of ‘I'ma make you the happiest woman in the whole wide world. …Which deal would you choose?” pic.twitter.com/fOw5d0TQ6A
In another instance, he was described to Rolling Stone as “belligerent” and yelling for the young woman to come outside of her dorm at the Harriet Tubman Quadrangle. Residents were sent into hysteria, banging on doors, after witnessing him attack his girlfriend outside.
“Puff is out here acting crazy. He’s beating her,” they purportedly told each other. “He screamed and hollered and acted a stone fool until she came downstairs,” only to then allegedly beat her with a belt “all over the place” while “screaming at the top of his lungs.”
The witness further recalled that he “whupped her butt — like really whupped her butt. She was trying to defend herself a little bit. She was crying. And we were telling him, ‘Get off of her.’ We were screaming for her.” The publication found an interview that Combs did with Jet magazine, in which he acknowledged that he had a “temper” even as a child. When angered, he would “always huff and puff,” and “that’s why my friend started calling me Puffy.”
“I’m reading the Diddy Rolling Stone piece and I cannot imagine the horror of seeing someone hitting one of my classmates with a belt outside the Quad. Dear Lord,” wrote an X user. Another person wrote, “Put him in the same block as Suge Knight & pay-per-view live…”
Another X user added, “As a Howard alum I’m sorry but it is so on brand for that school not to help the women on campus.”
His stage monikers seemed to change with the eras of his career, his last being “Love” and “Brother Love,” which were part of his rebrand in 2017, a year after he was caught on security cameras attacking Cassie at the since-shuttered InterContinental Hotel in Century City.
The footage is believed to have been confiscated during simultaneous raids by Homeland Security and FBI agents at his Miami and California homes in March of this year. He is said to have paid $50,000 for the tape nearly a decade ago to ensure it did not see the light of day.
The former billionaire vehemently denied last December that he had done “the awful things being alleged” and that people were trying to “assassinate my character, destroy my reputation, and my legacy” for a quick payday.
The statement came one month after he settled a $30 million lawsuit filed by Cassie accusing him of years of abuse and forcing her to perform sex acts with other men for his pleasure. Following confirmation that he did beat her on at least one occasion — as seen in the hotel video — he apologized and said he was in a dark place when the brutal incident took place.
According to CNN, a federal case involving victims seen on the tapes obtained from Combs’ homes may soon be presented to a grand jury. At the time of this report, he has not been charged with any crimes.
