The below article is a first-person account from an aspiring singer who alleges to have attended one of P Diddy’s ‘Freak Off’ parties. Diddy, real name Sean Combs, has been accused of sex trafficking, racketeering and transportation to engage in prostitution. He was found not guilty of sex trafficking and racketeering, but guilty of transportation to engage in prostitution. He has denied all allegations against him – including those about his alleged ‘freak off’ parties. Grazia has approached Combs for comment but is yet to receive a response.

As a singer-songwriter, you’re always waiting for your ‘big break’. In 2018, I was fresh out of a recording contract that didn’t work out and I started to manifest meeting a big name from the industry. My friend introduced me to this man, and he told me he wanted to fly me out to Miami for Ultra Music Week. ‘We can make a lot of good connections,’ he told me, insisting that he knew people from the industry. ‘I’ve got a group of girls coming with me.’ My intuition was like, ‘this guy is kind of fishy’, but it was an opportunity I couldn’t turn down.

After two weeks of no meetings, I said I wanted to go home – that’s when he said he wanted me to meet someone. He didn’t say P. Diddy’s name until the last minute because he insisted that he was trying to pull together the right group of girls. The day before we went Diddy’s house, he asked me to pick girls out in a nightclub, which was crazy. The last thing I wanted to do was pick up other girls. I wanted him to do something for me – to invest in me, let me rub elbows with people in the industry, introduce me to the people he said he knew.

When I found out we were going to a party at Diddy’s house I felt relieved, like he was finally keeping his word. I was expecting my big break being in the same room as someone as successful as Diddy, but it ended up being one of the most traumatising nights of my life.

Once we got to the house at about 7am – with about eight other girls– they took our phones and put them in these bubble cases, and I just thought this was some celebrity type of thing. We were stood in the garden when a man came over to me and gave me some white hotel slippers and said these are the shoes you have to wear to go into the house. They were basically picking people to invite into the house, but I didn’t realise, I just thought ‘oh, hospitality’. The same way I thought ‘oh, this is Hollywood’ when I saw people walking around naked. Even though this was very much a ‘freak off’ and not one of his elegant, white parties, it was still a celebrity affair. There were household names there, actors, artists. I thought, ‘This party is about to be off the hook.’

I put the shoes on and then Diddy came up behind me and started rubbing my side and I’m thinking, is he faded? Is he drunk? This is not the usual etiquette of a producer, not the ones I’ve met before. Maybe they flirt with you behind closed doors in the studio, but he was just all out with it.

The man who brought me to the party never said, ‘Hey, this is P. Diddy, this is the producer I wanted you to meet’, it was like we were all sent out on our own once we got there. I think the reason they wanted us to go around on our own is because they wanted us to get comfortable and take drinks and stuff, but I stuck with one of the girls I met in the club.

Now, an important detail is that I don’t really drink and I made sure I didn’t drink at this party because I was there to meet people. Maybe they thought I had some sips and that I was a little bit loose, but Diddy asked if I had been into his house yet because of the shoes. So I told my friend, ‘Okay I’m just going to go into the house, and I’ll be right back’, because I wanted to please him and not seem like a problem.

When I got into the house, it started to feel eerie. I think I would have eventually sipped the drink, but after seeing what was going on in the house, I’m glad I didn’t because I no longer trusted anything. There were huddles of people to my left and right. People having sex, people passed out, everywhere I look there was something going on.

The whole place was smoky and foggy and sweaty and hot, there was house music playing loudly, and everybody was out of their mind. I thought there must be a video shoot going on or something. I was in there for about five minutes, and I’d seen enough.

I found my friend and told her not to drink anything and tried to describe what I saw. Then the man that invited me called us over to a couch by the pool where he was sat with Diddy and a few girls. Diddy was jerking off. ‘Hi Tanea, are you coming to Cuba with us?’ one of the girls asked me. ‘Cuba?’ I replied. The man said, ‘I told you I wanted to stamp your passport. I told you I was going to change your life.’ At this point, I was running through the events thinking he asked me to stay with him in Miami for two weeks and it had been a month, then he brought me to this party, now he wants to take me further away? In that moment I felt so out of control, and I just wanted to cry.

When you’re an aspiring artist, people with more money than you can dangle success over you and then take it away. I knew I needed to get out of there and that they wouldn’t even notice I was gone, but I couldn’t leave without the code to the house I was staying in. Still, I didn’t want to make it obvious, so I even ended up going in the ‘Team Love’ photobooth – at least those photos prove that I was there.

When I got my phone back, I called the police and said I had been kidnapped, because I had been told I would be in Miami for two weeks and it had been a month. I was being kept against my will. I wanted to tell them what I saw at the party, but I knew they wouldn’t believe me.

The police arrived and let me out, but they didn’t ask any further questions. They called the man and told him what I said. He sent a business manager to the house to print me out a ticket to leave, but I didn’t have any money. One of the maids at the house gave me $100, like, ‘get out of here’. I think they all knew what was going on, even though it was a rented house on a private, very expensive street. I called a taxi with my $100 and went back to the airport. The next day I posted about the night on Snapchat and the man replied saying, ‘I’ve still got love for you. I can still take care of you if you want me to.’ Once I got back to LA, I tried to contact one of the girls from Vegas who I’d met in Miami, but her account had been deactivated. I don’t know what happened to her.

If the man ever had any intention of helping me with my career, he would have set up meetings and been on the road to getting me booked and making music. It was all a bunch of bullshit. I was so determined to make something happen while I was out there, but it was all for nothing. I came with nothing, and I left with nothing. It made me feel worthless. I gave up on my dream because I thought this is never going to work.

Before Diddy was arrested, hardly anyone believed me when I told them what happened. These things discourage you. I didn’t want to call anyone out either because I was worried that people wouldn’t want to work with me in the future. When Diddy got caught putting his hands on Cassie in the 2016 CCTV video that leaked online last May, I felt like I could come out and say something.

The only thing I’m grateful for is that I didn’t take that drink. I would have been intoxicated. I could have ended up in Cuba. At the end of the day, I’m relieved to be able to speak my truth, even if I never wanted to believe it myself. How many others are there? Probably a lot. How many victims could there be? Hundreds of them. I was just a regular girl who went to one party for a couple of hours. I’m still thankful I didn’t have to be the first person to come out with it – they wouldn’t have believed me.