Sean (Diddy) Combs has been indicted on sex trafficking, racketeering charges

Sean (Diddy) Combs faces federal sex trafficking and racketeering charges in an indictment, unsealed Tuesday, claiming he hit and abused women for over a decade and presided over an empire of sexual crimes.

The music mogul “engaged in a persistent and pervasive pattern of abuse toward women and other individuals,” according to an indictment unsealed Tuesday.

The indictment details allegations dating to 2008 that he abused, threatened and coerced women for years “to fulfil his sexual desires, protect his reputation and conceal his conduct.”

He is accused of inducing female victims and male sex workers into drugged-up, sometimes days-long sexual performances dubbed “Freak Offs” in the indictment, which refers obliquely to an attack on his former girlfriend, the R&B singer Cassie, that was captured on video.

Combs was arrested late Monday in Manhattan, roughly six months after federal authorities conducting a sex trafficking investigation raided his luxury homes in Los Angeles and Miami. He was due in court Tuesday to face the charges.

Over the past year, Combs has been sued by people who say he subjected them to physical or sexual abuse. He has denied many of those allegations, and his lawyer, Marc Agnifilo, said outside the courthouse Tuesday morning that Combs would plead not guilty and that he would “fight like hell” to try to get his client released from custody.

Of Combs, Agnifilo said: “His spirits are good. He’s confident.”

The indictment describes Combs, 54, as the head of a criminal enterprise that engaged or attempted to engage in activities including sex trafficking, forced labour, interstate transportation for purposes of prostitution, drug offences, kidnapping, arson, bribery and obstruction of justice. He’s accused of striking, punching and dragging women on numerous occasions, throwing objects and kicking them — and enlisting his personal assistants, security and household staff to help him hide it all.

Combs and his associates wielded his “power and prestige” to “intimidate, threaten and lure” women into his orbit, “often under the pretence of a romantic relationship,” the indictment says. It says he then would use force, threats and coercion to get the women to engage with male sex workers in “Freak Offs” — “elaborate and produced sex performances” that Combs arranged, directed, masturbated during and often recorded.

More to come.