Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs allegations: Former hip-hop dancer speaks out about the industry – ‘They share women. They share secrets’
“What Sean Combs is being accused of is not rare. He’s not an anomaly.”
For a year in the early noughties, Elisabeth Ovesen was a hip-hop video star dancing alongside some of the biggest names in the business. It was an era of big-budget music videos filled with, in rap especially, money, cars, and women.
She kept diaries. In 2005, she published Confessions Of A Video Vixen, recounting her difficult upbringing and relationships before finding a seemingly glamorous lifeline to financial security.
Under the name Karrine Steffans, she detailed her experiences on video sets as a 22-year-old woman, her relationships and sexual encounters with rappers, other music stars and executives. Most of her own experiences involving famous stars were consensual, she says; the book is a cautionary tale about a feted industry, her stories highlighting misogyny and power imbalances in terms of age and status, how women were used and discarded, rather than criminal behaviour.
But Ovesen says she was also aware of a much darker side to the music industry, and Hollywood in general.
In the wake of the #MeToo movement – and most recently the charges filed in the US against rapper Sean “Diddy” Combs, which he has strenuously denied – she says she wants people to know there are others “getting away” with similar behaviour and crimes.
Her words echo those of lawyer Tony Buzbee, who has filed several lawsuits against Combs. He has also claimed A-listers are paying off victims to avoid being publicly named.
Pic: AP
‘Everything that’s coming out wasn’t a secret’
Speaking to Sky News on Zoom, Ovesen recounts the night she first met Combs, saying she was “kind of ordered” to his house. Despite this, in hindsight, being a “weird” experience, she says he treated her well and with respect. “We’re at a club, I was with people he knew, our cars were leaving at the same time,” she says. Combs leaned out of a window to talk to the men in her car, “talking about me like I’m property”.
The men decided she would go to his house, she says. “It was kind of like, ‘send her’. In retrospect now I realise how weird that is.”
She says this was shortly after Combs’ break-up with Jennifer Lopez in 2001. “He was very sweet and very docile with me and very respectful. The next morning we had brunch at his house… again, [he was] pleasant, warm.” She says she went to other parties with Combs and he was always the same.
But he knew she kept diaries, she claims. “So my experiences with him are a lot different than hundreds of other people’s… I have seen him flare up. I have seen things that did not involve me.”
These are not her stories to tell, she says. “I don’t want to overshadow actual victims. I’m nobody’s victim.”
However, Ovesen says she became aware of the hip-hop star’s alleged behaviour, his abuse of former girlfriend Cassie, which he publicly apologised for, and the claims of “freak-off” parties detailed in the charges against him.
“I knew what kind of person he was to other people. Everything that’s coming out now about Sean wasn’t a secret… him and Cassie, that was an open secret in LA, in the industry. Everyone knew. The issue with something like that is that if someone says, ‘yeah, I was there, I’ve seen it. I know for sure’. Then the question becomes, well, what were you doing there?”
Elisabeth Ovesen, formerly known as Karrine Steffans, pictured after the release of the book, in 2006. Pic: JSSImages/BEImages
Misogyny and abuse in the hip-hop industry, and in the wider music industry – Hollywood in general – is rife, Ovesen says.
“If we’re looking at this one person and the industry this person is in, now let’s look at all the men who are not saying anything at all,” she says. “I want to be very clear that what Sean is being accused of is not rare. He’s not an anomaly… the behaviour is learned and perpetuated.”
Ovesen says some men she knew from the industry at the time had a family home – “and then there’s a party house”. Drugs were rife, she says, and she witnessed heroin, cocaine and crack being taken “by prominent celebrity men”.
Women are treated as objects and often suffer sexual abuse, she says. Some men too, and under-age boys and girls, she claims.
Artists “have the same agents, the same managers, the same handlers, the same accountants… they have the same friends. They share jets. They use each other’s houses. They share women. They share secrets. It’s not [just] a Sean Combs problem, it is a worldwide issue. It’s about men with money, men with power.”
When Ovesen arrived in LA, she was looking for dancing work. Being “discovered” for music videos, with payment of thousands of dollars for a day or two on set, would set her up. But she says she was never naïve about the industry and also acknowledges that a lot of her experiences were “fun”.
“I always knew what it was. I always knew why I was there. Women were being used as props and to make the men look good, and we were disposable and not treated with respect, for the most part. But coming from my particular background – having been an exotic dancer – that didn’t deter me or bother me at the time.”
Ovesen’s book, Confessions Of A Video Vixen, published by Harper Collins
CCTV cameras and NDAs
This is no longer Ovesen’s world, she points out. She has published several books since her first, and has also given lectures about her experiences. However, she says she has friends in the industry who say things haven’t changed.
She claims she went to house parties and woke to “screaming in the middle of the night – women being beaten, slapped, pushed around”, as well as men being abused, and closeted artists who feel “shame”, which turns to anger, “around sexual proclivities”.
Non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) are signed and people are often paid off, she says. “It’s not rare or weird, it’s just the way it always has been, where the men do awful things and then they pay people off.” NDAs were often presented at the doors to celebrity homes before parties. Ovesen says she signed one herself on one occasion in 2000, but refused after this.
“They have cameras everywhere,” she says, as would be typical for security of an expensive property. “Not only is that NDA going to tell you, whatever you see here stays in this house, it’s also going to explain if anything happens to you, you can’t sue. And there’s also a clause about any videotaping.”
Pic: iStock
Ovesen claims there are prominent actors, artists, producers and executives all involved in similar behaviour. She never witnessed an alleged “freak-off” party – because, she says again, Combs was aware she kept a diary. “But did I know about them? Yes. Did I hear about them? Yes.”
There are others who have “their own version”, she says. “I’m thinking of one actor in particular – an Oscar-winning actor”.
She says she was called a “whore” and a liar when she published her book, and in the years afterwards. People were “angry I discussed men they revered in a way that didn’t uphold that reverence”, she says. But nothing was sugarcoated, even “my willing participation. I didn’t try to make myself look good, I just told the truth”.
Ovesen wanted people to know what the industry was like. “Women are shamed about our consensual sex, we’re shamed about our non-consensual sex. Women are shamed no matter what they do.”
Since the rise of the #MeToo movement, she has noticed a change in the reaction, from younger women discovering her for the first time. She is frustrated there had to be a change at all, but pleased for younger women, she says. Next year, she will release an updated version of her book, marking 20 years since it was published.
“I want this new generation to understand how important it is to believe women, to support each other.”
Sky News has contacted representatives for Combs for comment.
What is Combs accused of?
Pic: AP Photo/Suzanne Plunkett 2000
Combs was arrested on suspicion of racketeering conspiracy and sex trafficking in September and has remained in prison ahead of a trial currently set for May, having been denied bail.
The hip-hop mogul has pleaded not guilty to charges that he coerced and abused women for years with the aid of a network of associates and employees, while silencing victims through blackmail and violence – including kidnapping, arson and physical beatings.
He is also facing several civil lawsuits, with one lawyer saying he is representing dozens of accusers. Combs says his sexual relationships were consensual, and denies all wrongdoing.
Earlier this week, it emerged that rapper Jay-Z has been accused of raping a 13-year-old girl after the MTV Video Music Awards in 2000, allegedly alongside Combs. A federal lawsuit – which originally only named Combs – was refiled to add Jay-Z, whose real name is Shawn Carter.
Jay-Z has strenuously denied those allegations and called for the identity of the accuser to be revealed, or for the case to be dismissed. He responded to the allegations in a lengthy statement sent to NBC News, Sky News’ US partner.
“These allegations are so heinous in nature that I implore you to file a criminal complaint, not a civil one!!” he said. “Whomever would commit such a crime against a minor should be locked away, would you not agree?
“These alleged victims would deserve real justice if that were the case.”
The rapper, who has three children with his wife Beyonce, continued: “My only heartbreak is for my family. My wife and I will have to sit our children down, one of whom is at the age where her friends will surely see the press and ask questions about the nature of these claims, and explain the cruelty and greed of people. I mourn yet another loss of innocence.
“Only your network of conspiracy theorists, fake physics, will believe the idiotic claims you have levied against me that, if not for the seriousness surrounding harm to kids, would be laughable.”
Entertainment
Upskirted, assaulted, accused of faking their music skills: Why female DJs need to be ‘bulletproof’
To see Koven’s Katie Boyle perform live is beyond impressive. Hailing from Luton, she is one of the most influential women in drum ‘n’ bass today, an artist who pioneered the art of singing live while DJing.
Although she’s now been doing it for 12 years, her vast knowledge doesn’t silence the trolls online.
“There is a real bad misogyny online against women,” she says of the industry, with plenty of critics refusing to “believe they’re doing what they say they’re doing, and that’s been quite a hard thing to combat”.
Koven is a duo. In the studio, Boyle collaborates with producer Max Rowat; live, she performs and mixes alone. They have just released their second album, Moments In Everglow.
Koven (L-R): Max Rowat and Katie Boyle
While both Boyle and Rowat are equally involved in making tracks, a minority of very vocal fans still refuse to accept she does anything other than sing.
“I will always be accused of the male half doing more on anything to do with technology,” says Boyle. “The amount of comments [I get] to say, ‘she didn’t make this’. No explanation as to why they think that it is, just purely because [I’m] a woman, which is just mad.”
Koven’s Katie Boyle says she has had some ‘awful incidences’
While Boyle loves performing live, there are moments, she admits, where being one of the few women on the scene can feel unsafe.
“I’ve had some awful incidences,” she says. “I had someone run on stage and completely grab me, hand down my top, down my trousers, while I was on the stage, which is crazy because you think that’s happening in front of an audience. I mean, this guy literally had to be plied off me.
“That was when I did think, ‘I need to bring someone with me to most places’. I didn’t feel safe travelling around by myself.”
‘You get trolled for everything’
DJ Paulette. Pic: Paulette
Sadly, Boyle isn’t alone. Over a 30-year career, DJ Paulette has scaled the heights of dance music fame, playing throughout Europe, with a residency back in the day at Manchester’s Hacienda.
“Let’s just say I have two towels on my rider and it’s not just because I sweat a lot,” she jokes, miming a whack for those around her.
“I’ve spent time in DJ booths where I’ve had a skirt on and people have been taking pictures up my skirt. People think upskirting is a joke… and I got fed up with it.” Wearing shorts, she says, she still ended with “people with their hands all over me”. Now, she sticks to trousers. “But we shouldn’t have to alter the way we look for the environment that we work in.”
She admits, in order to stick it out, she’s had to bulletproof herself. “You get trolled for everything, for the way you look – if you put on weight, if you’ve lost weight.”
Not only is the discourse towards female DJs different online, she says, she has also been repeatedly told by those working in the industry that because she’s a woman, she has a sell-by date.
“I went for dinner with three guys… one of them said to me, ‘you know Paulette there is no promoter or organiser who is ever going to employ a black female DJ with grey hair’, and they all laughed.
“That was them saying to me that my career was over, and I was in my 40s. At the time, I felt crushed… I think it really does take women who have a real steel will to make their way through.”
‘I will not stop talking about it’
DJ Jaguar at the International Music Summit in Ibiza. Pic: Ben Levi Suhling
As the great and the good of the dance world gather in Ibiza for the industry’s annual International Music Summit, with dance music more popular than ever there is of course much to party about.
But for BBC Radio 1 broadcaster and DJ Jaguar, one of this year’s summit’s cohosts, some serious conversations also need to be had.
“You can get off the plane and look at the billboards around Ibiza and it’s basically white men – David Guetta, Calvin Harris, and they are incredible artists in their own right – but the women headliners, there’s barely any visibility of them, it’s awful.”
She adds: “I will not stop talking about it because it is the reality.”
Trolling and safety are also big concerns. “You’re in these green rooms, there’s a lot of people there, drinking and doing other things… and I’ve walked into green rooms where I felt incredibly uncomfortable, especially when I was a bit younger. I was on my own, it’s like 2am, and you have to watch yourself.”
Male DJs don’t have the same stories
The International Music Summit in Ibiza
She says she has female friends who have had drinks spiked when they were DJing. But her male friends? “They don’t have the same stories to tell me.”
Creamfields, arguably the UK’s biggest dance festival, is emblematic of the gender imbalance. It remains one of the least representative festivals in terms of female artists, with last year’s line-up more than 80% male.
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Laila MacKenzie, founder of Lady Of The House, a community that supports and tries to encourage more women into dance music, says the talent pipeline problem isn’t helped by the current discourse online.
“There is a real damaging factor how people can be really nasty online and really nasty in the media and how that actually may discourage and demotivate women from stepping forward into their talent,” she says.
In reality, for so many women working within dance music, the trolling can be so unpleasant that it’s drowning out the good.
“There is so much positivity and so many lovely and supportive people,” says Boyle. “But unfortunately it feels like the negative and the toxic energy is just louder sometimes.”
In October 2016, Kim Kardashian was robbed at gunpoint – with jewellery worth millions of dollars stolen during the audacious heist in Paris.
It was the biggest robbery of an individual in France for more than 20 years – and made front pages around the world.
Now, almost a decade on, the case is finally coming to court.
Why has it taken so long? Will Kardashian give evidence? And who exactly are the “grandpa robbers” facing trial?
Here’s everything you need to know.
Kardashian at the Siran Presentation on the day of the robbery. Pic: Rex Features
What happened?
Two years after Kardashian and rapper Kanye West tied the knot in an ostentatious week-long celebration spanning Paris and Florence, the Kardashian-West clan were back in the French capital for Paris Fashion Week.
Her then husband had returned to the US to pick up his Saint Pablo tour – but Kardashian, along with her sister Kourtney and various members of their entourage, remained in Paris, staying in an exclusive set of apartments so discreet they’ve been dubbed the No Address Hotel.
Nestled on Tronchet Street, just a stone’s throw from Place de l’Opéra, and close to the fashionable Avenue Montaigne, the Hotel de Pourtalès is popular with A-list stars staying in the French capital.
A stay in the Sky Penthouse, the suite occupied by Kardashian, will currently set you back about £13,000 a night.
Kardashian was staying at the Hotel de Pourtales
On the evening of 3 October, after attending a fashion show with her sister, Kardashian remained in the apartment alone while the rest of her convoy – including her bodyguard Pascal Duvier – went out for the night.
At about 2.30am, three armed men wearing ski masks and dressed as police forced their way into the apartment block – and according to investigators, they threatened the concierge at gunpoint.
Two of them are alleged to have forced the concierge to lead them to Kardashian’s suite. He later told police they yelled at him: “Where’s the rapper’s wife?”
Kardashian said she had been “dozing” on her bed when the men then entered her room.
She has said she believes her social media posts provided the alleged robbers with “a window of opportunity”.
“I was Snapchatting that I was home, and that everyone was going out,” she said in the months after the incident.
The Keeping Up With The Kardashians star vividly described the attack in a police report, as reported in the French weekly paper Le Journal du Dimanche.
“They grabbed me and took me into the hallway. They tied me up with plastic cables and taped my hands, then they put tape over my mouth and my legs.”
She said they pointed a gun at her, asking specifically for her ring and also for money.
Police guard the entrance to the Hotel de Pourtalès the day after the robbery
Kardashian says they carried her into the bathroom and put her in the bathtub. She said she was wearing only a bathrobe at the time.
She had initially thought the robbers “were terrorists who had come to kidnap me”, according to a French police report taken in New York three months after the robbery.
Kardashian told officers: “I thought I was going to die.”
According to police, the robbers – who left the room after grabbing their haul, escaped on bicycles with items estimated to be worth about $10m (£7.5m), including a $4m (£3m) 18.88-carat diamond engagement ring from West.
After they had left, Kardashian said she escaped her restraints and went to find help. After speaking to detectives, she immediately returned to the US on a private jet and later hired a completely new security team.
Kardashian shows off her $4m ring on Instagram
What was stolen?
As well as her engagement ring, Kardashian said the thieves took her large Louis Vuitton jewellery box, which she said contained “everything I owned”.
In police reports given to the French authorities at about 4.30am on the night of the alleged robbery, Kardashian listed these items as having been stolen:
• Two diamond Cartier bracelets
• A gold and diamond Jacob necklace
• Diamond earrings by Lauren Schwartz
• Yanina earrings
• Three gold Jacob necklaces
• Little bracelets, jewels and rings
• A Lauren Schwartz diamond necklace
• A necklace with six little diamonds
• A necklace with Saint spelt out in diamonds
• A cross-shaped diamond-encrusted Jacob cross
• A yellow gold Rolex watch
• Two yellow gold rings
• An iPhone 6 and a BlackBerry
Police recovered only the diamond-encrusted cross that was dropped by the robbers while leaving.
It’s likely the gold in the haul was melted down and resold, while the diamond engagement ring that is now so associated with the robbery would be far too recognisable to sell on the open market.
Kardashian at the Siran Presentation on the day of the robbery. Pic: Rex Features
What will happen in court?
The hearing will begin at the Court of Appeal of Paris – the largest appeals court in France – on 28 April and is scheduled to last a month.
It will consist of a presiding judge, two professional assessors, and six main jurors.
The hearing involves more than 2,000 documents and there are four civil parties.
Kardashian at the Balenciaga show on the day of the robbery. Pic: Rex Features
Who is being tried?
There were initially 12 defendants in the case, but one person has died and another has a medical condition that prevents their involvement. This means 10 people – nine men and one woman – are standing trial.
Five of them, who were all aged between 60 and 72 at the time of the incident, face armed robbery and kidnapping charges. They are:
• Yunice Abbas
• Aomar Ait Khedache
• Harminv Ait Khedache
• Didier Dubreucq
• Marc-Alexandre Boyer
Abbas, 72, has admitted his participation in the robbery. In 2021, he published a book about the robbery, titled I Kidnapped Kim Kardashian. In 2021, a court ruled he would not benefit financially from the book.
Aomar Ait Khedache, 69, known to French crime reporters as “Old Omar”, has also admitted participating in the heist but denies the prosecution’s accusation that he was the ringleader.
The remaining five defendants are charged with complicity in the heist or the unauthorised possession of a weapon. They are:
• Florus Heroui
• Gary Mader
• Christiane Glotin
• François Delaporte
• Marc Boyer
Among those, Mader was a VIP greeter who worked for the car company Kardashian used in Paris, and Heroui was a bar manager who allegedly passed on information about Kardashian’s movements.
With many of the accused now ageing and with various serious health conditions, and some having spent time in jail following their arrest, all are currently free under judicial supervision.
If found guilty, those accused of the more serious crimes could face 10 years to life imprisonment.
Kardashian at the Off-White show three days before the robbery. Pic: Rex Features
Will Kardashian give evidence?
Yes.
Lawyer Michael Rhodes said Kardashian has “tremendous appreciation and admiration for the French judicial system” and “wishes for the trial to proceed in an orderly fashion in accordance with French law and with respect for all parties to the case”.
A trainee lawyer herself, Kardashian has become a high-profile criminal justice advocate in the US in recent years.
(R-L) Kanye West, Kim Kardashian, Kourtney Kardashian, Kris Jenner in the front row three days before the robbery. Pic: Rex Features
Why has it taken so long to come to court?
There was initially a manhunt after the robbery, with French police under pressure to prove that Paris’s security was not in question.
Just the year before in 2015, the capital had been shaken by terrorist attacks by Islamic militants, in which 130 people were killed, including 90 at a music event at the Bataclan theatre.
French police initially arrested 17 people in the Kardashian case in January 2017 – three months after the robbery – assisted by DNA traces found on plastic bands used to tie her wrists. Twelve people were later charged.
It was ordered to be sent to trial in 2021 – at a time when limited court proceedings were happening due to multiple COVID lockdowns, and France was holding its largest ever criminal trial over the November 2015 terror attacks.
Kardashian at the Givenchy show on the day of the robbery. Pic: Rex Features
What has Kardashian said about the incident?
Kardashian has described the robbery as a “life-changing” moment. She took three weeks away from filming her reality TV show Keeping Up With the Kardashians, and took a three-month break from social media.
In a March 2017 episode titled Paris, Kardashian first spoke publicly about her ordeal.
She described first hearing a noise in her apartment, and calling out, thinking it was her sister and assistant: “At that moment when there wasn’t an answer, my heart started to get really tense. Like, you know, your stomach just kind of like, knots up and you’re like, ‘OK, what’s going on?’ I knew something wasn’t quite right.”
She went on: “They asked for money. I said, ‘I don’t have any money’. They dragged me out to the hallway on top of the stairs. That’s when I saw the gun, clear as day. I was looking at the gun, looking down back at the stairs. I was like, I have a split second in my mind to make this quick decision.
“Either they’re going to shoot me in the back or if I make it [down the stairs] and the elevator does not open in time or the stairs are locked, there’s no way out.”
Three months later, she told a Forbes Power Women’s Summit she had changed her approach to posting on social media: “They had followed my moves on social media, and they knew my every move and what I had.”
She added: “It was definitely a huge, huge, huge lesson for me to not show off some of the things that I have. It was a huge lesson to me to not show off where I go.
“It’s just changed my whole life, but I think for the better.”
West and Kardashian at the Off-White show three days before the robbery. Pic: Rex Features
In October 2020, Kardashian told US interviewer David Letterman she feared she would be raped and murdered during the heist, and that her sister had been at the forefront of her mind during the incident.
Speaking on My Next Guest Needs No Introduction, Kardashian said: “I kept on thinking about Kourtney, I kept on thinking she’s going to come home and I’m going to be dead in the room and she’s going to be traumatised for the rest of her life if she sees me… I thought that was my fate.”
When speaking to French police about the impact the robbery had had on her three months after it, Kardashian said: “I think that my perception of jewellery now is that I am not as attached to it as I used to be. I don’t have the same feeling about it. In fact, I even think that it has become a bit of a burden to have the responsibility of such expensive jewels.
“There is nothing of sentimental value to compare with the act of going home and finding one’s children and one’s family.”
She went on to describe Paris as “not the right place” for her, and didn’t return to the French capital for two years following the robbery.
Kardashian has since said in a 2023 episode of Keeping Up With The Kardashians that she did not purchase any jewellery in the seven years following the robbery, kept no jewellery at her home and only wore items that are either borrowed or fake.
She said the realisation that material items don’t matter has made her “a completely different person in the best way”.
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