Sean Combs’ reported plan to get out of federal custody and counsel domestic violence abusers is striking a nerve with his accusers.
“This is utterly preposterous,” Douglas Wigdor, the victims’ rights attorney who represents Combs’ ex-girlfriend Casandra “Cassie” Ventura tells Rolling Stone.
“How are you going to counsel someone else when you haven’t done the work on yourself? This is manipulation at its best,” one source who alleges they were physically assaulted by Combs in the 2010s, whose story has been corroborated by Rolling Stone, adds.
“It’s [making] a mockery of the system. It’s a mockery of everyone he’s harmed,” another alleged victim now pursing litigation against Combs says. “He needs intensive therapy.”
The chorus of criticism followed one of Combs’ trial lawyers, Alexandra Shapiro, telling Business Insider the Bad Boy Records founder hopes to become an anti-domestic violence counselor “to help in whatever ways he can to kind of encourage other people not to do this and really to help in positive ways in the future.”
Shapiro reportedly said Combs’ defense team plans to include his intended pursuit of counseling work in court filings requesting a sentence of time-served for his recent conviction on two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution.
“The idea is that he would work with programs and be able to go in and talk to people, talk to youth, talk to others about the issue in a proactive way and be an advocate for this,” Shapiro reportedly said. “And sometimes, people like him can be the best spokesperson to try to help.”
Gloria Allred, a lawyer representing two plaintiffs with lawsuits pending against Combs, says the convicted mogul has a long road ahead of him before he’s ready to even consider counseling. (She also represents other alleged victims who spoke to law enforcement and were on the potential witness list at the criminal trial but were not called to the stand, she says.)
“At this point, his stated goal does not pass the laugh test,” Allred tells Rolling Stone. Once he’s released, she says, his first stop should be a treatment program for anger management. “After that, he should take responsibility for any wrong that he has inflicted on any of his many alleged victims and compensate them for the damages, which exist as a result of his conduct,” she says. “Finally, he should ask the individuals he has victimized for forgiveness for the wrongs that he has inflicted on them. Then and only then, he should enter a training program to learn how to be a counselor against sexual or any other type of physical violence.”
Combs, 55, was found guilty of the two prostitution-related Mann Act violations last month after an eight-week trial. Jurors acquitted him of the more serious charges of racketeering conspiracy and sex trafficking. Prosecutors had alleged Combs coerced Ventura and a more recent girlfriend who testified under the pseudonym “Jane” into drug-fueled threesomes with male escorts. They said Combs choreographed the “freak offs” while masturbating and taking videos.
Shortly after Ventura filed the bombshell sex-trafficking lawsuit that alleged extensive physical abuse against him in November 2023, which led to his arrest on criminal sex-trafficking charges last September, Combs denied any wrongdoing through his lawyer. But in May 2024, CNN obtained video showing Combs kicking and dragging Ventura in a hallway of the InterContinental Hotel in Los Angeles in 2016. Combs took “full responsibility” for the beat down in an apology video, saying he was “truly sorry.”
At trial, he and his lawyers admitted he was violent with Ventura on several occasions, but they repeatedly argued “domestic violence is not sex trafficking.” They claimed the hotel surveillance video was a domestic dispute caused by romantic jealousy. Ventura testified that she was fleeing a freak-off that had turned violent.
Over four days of harrowing testimony, Ventura described how Combs’ “eyes went black” during one horrific attack inside an Escalade in January 2009, near the start of their relationship. Combs allegedly stomped on her face with his shoes on for 10 minutes. She said the physical abuse continued until they broke up for good in fall 2018. She claimed Combs also threatened to release her intimate videos if she didn’t meet his freak-off demands.
When it was time to cross-examine Ventura, the defense did not challenge her domestic violence claims. “We own them,” Agnifilo said. “If he was charged with domestic violence, we wouldn’t all be here having a trial because he would have pled guilty — because he did that,” the lawyer said in his closing argument. It proved to be a winning strategy with the jury.
How U.S. District Judge Arun Subramanian will view Combs’ aspirations to counsel other abusers is not clear. At a detention hearing the day Combs was convicted, the judge noted that Combs had “conceded” his violence in his personal relationships, so he was enough of a danger to the community to warrant keeping him in custody pending sentencing.
“This type of violence, which happens behind closed doors in personal relationships, sparked by unpredictable bouts of anger, is impossible to police with conditions,” the judge said. He noted that even after the March 2024 searches of Combs’ homes, when he was “aware he was under investigation for sex trafficking,” he still battered Jane at her home. This was “at a time when he should have known that he needed to stay clean,” the judge said.
Combs’ sentencing is set for Oct. 3.