HOUSTON — An Alabama woman who accused Jay-Z and Diddy of raping her when she was 13 years old spoke to NBC News about what she called a “devastating event.” A rap star’s sexual assault ruins her life.
However, the woman and her attorney also acknowledged in response to questions from NBC News that there were some inconsistencies in her account.
“I made some mistakes,” a woman identified as Jane Doe in the lawsuit filed against Jay-Z and Diddy told NBC News in her recollection of that night. The woman said she fully supported her claim. Inconsistencies in her account of the incident, which allegedly occurred 24 years ago, do not necessarily mean the allegations are false.
The contradiction is that the woman said her father came to pick her up after the alleged sexual assault, but she doesn’t remember it happening. The woman also claims she spoke to a celebrity at the afterparty and said she was sexually assaulted, but that the celebrity was not in New York at the time. And images from that night show Jay-Z (real name Shawn Carter) and Sean “Diddy” Combs in a different location than the woman described, but throughout the night. The whereabouts of the two men are unknown.
“This incident never happened,” Carter told NBC News in a statement Friday. “Yet he took it to court and doubled down on the press,” citing Tony Buzbee, one of the woman’s attorneys. added and added. “True justice is coming. We don’t fight for victory, we fight from victory. This was over before it began. This 1-800 lawyer doesn’t realize it yet, but soon is.”
Buzbee said she continues to review her claims.
“The Jane Doe case was referred to our office by another person and was reviewed before being forwarded to our office,” he told NBC News in an email. “Our client continues to insist that, to the best of her recollection, what she has said is true. We continue to review her claims and gather supporting data to the extent that it exists. We grilled her so much that she agreed to submit to a polygraph, which we had never received before from a client.”
“In any case, we always do our best to scrutinize each allegation that is brought to us, as in this case,” he added. This was so painful for her that she had seizures and had to undergo treatment due to stress. ”
The charges against Carter signal a seismic shift, potentially linking the rap legend to conduct alleged in civil and criminal cases against Combs, who is in a Brooklyn jail awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking and racketeering charges. There is sex.
“Not only did his attorney bring these serious charges without proper vetting, but he also tried to make matters worse by spreading this false story to the press,” said Carter’s attorney, Alex Spiro. It’s amazing what he did.” We are asking the court to dismiss this frivolous lawsuit today and will consider additional disciplinary action against Mr. Buzbee and all of the attorneys who filed the complaint. ”
Combs’ attorney called the lawsuit a “disgraceful money grab.” Buzbee has filed more than 20 lawsuits against Combs.
The suit, originally filed in October in the Southern District of New York and naming Combs as a defendant, was refiled on Sunday with Carter as a separate defendant.
NBC News was in Houston earlier this week and interviewed a woman (who declined to be identified) at a lawyer’s office.
“You always have to fight against what happened to you,” she said of why she is now going public with the accusations. “You should always advocate for yourself and represent your own voice. You should never allow your life to be ruined or ruined by someone else, as I have come forward. , I hope I can inspire others to come forward too.”
The now 38-year-old woman, who was living in Rochester, New York, in 2000, told NBC News that attending the VMAs was “on my bucket list when I was 13 years old. ‘Oh my God. I was like, ‘That’s it.'” What I have to do. ” She said she snuck out the window to escape her parents.
In the lawsuit, she said a friend drove her to Radio City Music Hall in New York City. People flocked to the viewing area outside the venue, which was decorated to display the awards. The crowd roared when J.Lo arrived. Eminem performed on the street.
She said she didn’t have a ticket and watched part of the show on the jumbotron outside while wearing a suit. She also started chatting with the limousine driver. “I’m going to leave and go to the afterparty and be invited to meet the celebrities,” she told NBC News.
One limousine driver, who works for Combs, said she was “exactly what Diddy was looking for” and told him to come back later and take him to the afterparty. . Dressed in a suit, she said she arrived at a “big white mansion with a U-shaped driveway with a gate” after about 20 minutes in a limousine. She said in the lawsuit that she signed documents she had not read.
Secretly, she told NBC News: “I’m talking to Fred Durst and Benji Madden about his tattoos, because it’s his ‘Last Supper’ tattoo. I have a religious background. I just want to talk. That was it.”
After receiving her drink from the waitress, she told NBC News: I started looking for a place to lie down. ”
Dressed in a suit, she said she found an empty room with a bed and shortly after, Combs, Carter and a woman entered the room. “I’m ready to party!” Combs said, according to the complaint.
She said both Mr. Combs and Mr. Carter raped her. “Jay-Z comes and holds me down. I start trying to push him away. He puts his hand over my mouth and says stop, cut me off, and then he pushes me like he’s overpowered me. I raped her,” she said.
He then managed to escape from the house, still wearing his suit, and ran to a gas station.
“I was upset, but the guy at the gas station could tell I was clearly upset and let me use the phone. My dad was the only person I could trust at the time. “I called my dad. I told him I had failed and needed a ride home,” she told NBC News. “We went home in silence. He didn’t ask me what happened. He didn’t ask what I did or where I was.”
She told NBC News that she never told anyone about the alleged assault or wrote it down in her diary. “If someone finds out, who’s going to believe me? So it was against two famous people’s words against me,” she said.
The next few years were tough, she said. “I developed severe depression. I completely withdrew. My grades started to decline,” she said, and she dropped out of school. She said she experienced homelessness and at one point suffered a head injury. She and her father also said they were raped later in life.
She currently has two children, a son and a daughter. She served in the Army National Guard for less than a year, retiring with the rank of private first class. She earned her high school diploma and “got a certification in Christian counseling so I could help people who were going through the same things I went through,” she said.
She also said she is getting certified in applied behavior analysis to help people with autism. “For mothers without adequate income, there are very few resources,” she says.
In the days after the woman went public with her accusations against Mr. Carter, the reaction was swift. The rapper issued a statement harshly criticizing his attorney, calling the allegations “stupid” and “inherently heinous.”
There are several inconsistencies in her account of that night.
Her father told NBC News he had no recollection of picking her up after the alleged attack, casting doubt on key details of the case.
According to her address at the time, her father must have driven more than five hours from his home to pick her up.
“I feel like I remember that, but I don’t,” he said in an interview Thursday. “There’s a lot going on, but that’s definitely something that will stick with me.”
The woman’s father said he learned of the alleged assault this week, adding that he remembered picking her up once in the middle of the night. But it was “a local drive,” he said.
Asked about her father’s account in a follow-up interview Friday, the woman stood by her claim that her father had come to pick her up, saying she may have misremembered.
“There are a lot of things, and we always discuss this, that he has no recollection of anything he said or did during that period in New York.” she said. “In fact, it can sometimes lead to more fights in the family.”
Regarding her memory of her father, Buzbee told NBC News: …His daughter explains that he was unable to remember at the time due to personal issues he was having at the time. We are talking about a time more than 20 years ago. ”
The woman also told NBC News that she spoke to musician Benji Madden at the afterparty.
However, a representative for Madden confirmed that neither Benji nor his brother Joel attended the 2000 VMAs, as they were touring the Midwest at the time. (The woman did not accuse the brothers of any wrongdoing.)
“To be honest, the clearest thing is what happened to me and what happened to me. Not all the faces out there are that clear,” the woman said Friday. said in a follow-up interview. “So, I made some mistakes. Maybe it was my poor judgment.”
The woman also could not provide details about the afterparty she said she attended.
Combs and Carter, whose professional images were reviewed by the NBC News program, were among the celebrities who attended the VMA afterparty at Lotus Nightclub in New York City. It is unclear when these images were taken or whether Combs and Carter attended any other after-parties.
The building Lotus lived in is now closed, but it doesn’t match the description of the house the woman gave in her lawsuit or in interviews.
Asked Tuesday where she thought she was being taken that night, the woman said, “I didn’t even know exactly where she was going or how long it took.” She added that she had speculated about the amount of travel time the case would take.
Mr Buzbee said: “We have attempted to confirm the exact location. We have never suggested that the location is the Lotus Club. And he talked about it in detail, but he never said it was a Lotus Club.”
He added: “I won’t speculate on whether there was an afterparty because she doesn’t know about it.”
Also among the woman’s unsubstantiated claims is how she arrived in New York City that night.
One of her attorneys provided NBC News with the name and date of birth of the friend she allegedly drove the car with, who would have been 20 years old at the time. Apparently that person has since died. NBC News attempted to contact the person’s relatives without success.
