Hollywood Week: Sean Combs Hit with New Sex Assault Charges, Garth Brooks Rape Allegations, Kris Kristofferson
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- Category: Entertainment News
- Published on Saturday, 05 October 2024 11:39
- Written by Janet Walker
Disgraced Hip Hop mogul Sean 'Diddy' Combs is expected to be hit with more than 100 additional sexual assault lawsuits, which include charges for using a controlled substance to facilitate sex, recording the sex acts, and minors.
120 New Sex Assault Law Suits brought Against Sean Combs
Sean Combs, 54, who once boosted a billion-dollar financial portfolio, is now awaiting trial in a federal prison in Brooklyn. The Harlem-born rap mogul was one of the forerunners in the entertainment industry that realized the urban potential, and the acceptance of Hip-Hop as a musical genre, was here to stay.
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However, Combs and his Bad Boy Entertainment company, was never outside of the purview of law enforcement. He flashed like Harlem born drug lord Frank Lucas. "His brand became synonymous with a lifestyle of excess — mansions, yachts, private planes, luxury cars, women, Cristal, furs and over-the-top gifts," Yahoo! Entertainment reported.
His revenue stream paved the entrance to Wall Street's ultra exclusive boys' club, where financers called him a "genius," and an "inspiration," on par with the Founding Fathers. With all that front facing flash, and the acceptance in places where money buys entrance, Combs, was a hometown hero, a Bad Boy who, with the right marketing and public relations team, made the public celebrate him and even the most exclusive clubs like the New York Stock Exchange welcomed him and extended an invitation to Combs to ring the opening bell in 2006, and the closing in August 2016, ten years later.
Those years weren't without brushes with the law. As the Hip Hop culture became synonymous with violence, Combs, and his then girlfriend, Bronx born entertainment mogul Jennifer Lopez, were arrested along with Comb's bodyguard, Anthony "Wolf" Jones, and a Combs protégé Jamal "Shyne" Barrow, 21, after a 1999 shooting in a Manhattan club left three injured.
Pursued after the shooting, through the streets of Manhattan, they were eventually caught, and NYPD found a stolen gun. Lopez was released immediately. Combs, Jones and Barrow, were acquitted by a Manhattan jury, leaving the Manhattan DA's office, with the embarrassment of a huge loss.
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Combs essentially bitch slapped the DA, and they never forgot it. If he had been on their radar before this, he was now enemy number one, and now they had probable cause, which translates to extensive, long-term, and warranted surveillance.
And the money kept rolling in, and when the money is available, everyone wants a piece of it. So, when Combs went shopping for real estate on Long Island's east end, in the exclusive Hamptons, where entertainment, publishing, fashion, lifestyle brand mogul's all own homes, he became the most welcome gangsta rapper in the neighborhood, at least in face value. Owning real estate in The Hamptons, where luxury estates have been known to sell for as high as $175 million, was the entrance to the uber wealthy, ultra-elite, and privileged.
Each summer, Combs began holding in now infamous "White Parties," where his East Hampton home would be the most coveted party invitation of the summer, boasting a who's who of famous guests including Hollywood A-Listers, who allowed themselves to be photographed, Hip-Hop Moguls including Jay-Z, Russel Simmons, singers Mariah Carey, and Jennifer Lopez and many others, who were attended because money, a Wall Street tycoon, and Entertainment company founder, invited them.
Combs began to live and manifest what money could do, the people and the silence it could buy, essentially, money buys it all, and there no relationship that is not transactional. This belief, which generated an Icarus belief of invincibility, became part of Combs company culture and would lead to his downfall.
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"Prosecutors say Mr. Combs enlisted employees, enablers and prostitutes to stage far darker soirees than White Parties called "freak-offs" — drug-heavy, sometimes days-long hotel parties during which investigators say he abused and coerced participants into sexual acts, which he sometimes filmed and masturbated to," reported The New York Times.
Special privileges, that law enforcement enacts to deal with the elite in any profession, is a benefit extended to money, and only after constant, steady and long-term violation, are the privileged held accountable.
Attorney Tony Buzbe, who has been named by New York Magazine, as "one of the most successful lawyers in the country," announced this week his firm will be filing 120 additional sexual lawsuits against the mogul in three jurisdictions, New York, California, and Florida, over the coming weeks. The lawyers have stated they plan to also accuse Combs of facilitating sex with a controlled substance, false imprisonment and recording the various acts for extortion, leverage.
Buzbe said, at a Houston press conference, "The names that we're going to name, assuming our investigators confirm and corroborate what we've been told, are names that will shock you," he added. "I'm talking here about not just the cowardly but complicit bystanders, that is those people that we know watched this behavior occur and did nothing. And I'm talking about the people that participated, encouraged it, egged it on. They know who they are," reported The Washington Post.
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Garth Brooks Sued for Rape
Country Music singer Garth Brooks has been sued in Los Angeles Superior Court by his former make-up and stylist for an alleged rape in a Los Angeles hotel in 2019.
"The "Jane Roe," in a lawsuit filed on Thursday in Los Angeles Superior Court, advances allegations of sexual assault, battery and violations of California laws providing protections from intimidation and coercion. In addition to rape, she claims he repeatedly groped and subjected her to sexually explicit comments," reported The Hollywood Reporter.
The singer was allegedly in settlement negotiation with the victim when he filed a lawsuit in Mississippi to stop her from moving forward with her lawsuit, claiming she was attempting to extort him for failure to provide adequate pay raises.
Kris Kristofferson, Award Winning Singer, Songwriting, Actor, Dies
Kris Kristofferson, a man of many lives, passed away this week, at his home in Maui. He was 88.
It wasn't until Kristofferson's death, that stories of his early life, a Rhodes Scholar studying Literature at Oxford University, a man with an enlightened mind, pursuing the poetry of William Blake, a former military captain, and a helicopter pilot, as well as the walks through the darker side, that the fuller picture of Kris Kristofferson began to emerge.
His belief of the gift of creativity was influenced by his study of the poet William Blake. "Blake thought that if you were called by the Divine to be creative, you were obligated," he once told the London Independent. "He said that if you buried your talent, sorrow and desperation would pursue you throughout life, and after death, shame and confuse you until eternity. For a young guy like me who wanted to be creative against everybody else's advice, that was powerful stuff," reported The Washington Post.
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Of course, many will only remember him as the musical genius and sometime actor, who starred in a string of commercially successful films in the 1970s and 1980s including "A Star is Born," with Barbara Streisand, "Convoy," opposite Ali McGraw, and "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore," opposite Ellen Burstyn.
As he left his earlier practical life for his passion in the arts, his family, which from what has been reported were reasonable people, steady, and couldn't understand why their son would leave a practical existence for the precarious and treacherous seas of the entertainment industry.It was as if he created a mortal sin, as it has been said, his mother disowned him.
Undaunted, he took a janitorial job on Nashville's Music row, sweep the floors, writing and pitching songs. His big break came after he borrowed a helicopter and landed on Johnny Cash's lawn, with a tape. Evetually, Cash, who had rejected him earlier came around. Soon he was selling his songs. Kristofferson was most well known for "Me and Bobby McGee," recorded by Janis Joplin, a week before her death. He also wrote the lyrics for "Help me Make it Through The Night," "Sunday Morning Coming Downs," and "Vietnam Blues." His passion for music and songwriting superseded his desire for acting.
"He began to resurrect his musical career in 1985 when he began touring with Cash, [Willie] Nelson and Waylon Jennings as a supergroup called the Highwaymen. Between 1985 and 1995, they recorded three albums: two on Columbia Records and one for Liberty Records. Their Columbia works produced three chart singles, including the No. 1 "Highwayman" in 1985," reported The Washington Post.
Kristofferson is survived by three children and seven grandchildren.
"The Wednesday Killer," from Haute-Lifestyle.com Publisher Janet Walker, Nominated for Screenplay of the Year
Janet Walker is the publisher, founder, and sole owner of Haute-Lifestyle.com. A graduate of New York University, she has been covering international news through the Beltway Insider, a weekly review of the nation's top stories, for more than a decade. A general beat writer/reporter and entertainment/film critic, she is also an accomplished news/investigative news/crime reporter and submitted for Pulitzer Prize consideration "Cops Conspire to Deep Six Sex Assaults" in the Breaking News Category. Ms. Walker has completed five screenplays, "The Six Sides of Truth," "The Assassins of Fifth Avenue," "The Wednesday Killer," "The Manhattan Project," and the sci-fi thriller "Project 13: The Last Day." She is a member of the Los Angeles Press Club, the National Writers Union, and the International Federation of Journalists.
