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Diddy‘s former bodyguard Joseph Sherman has responded to being accused of raping a woman alongside his then-boss back in 2001 — and he’s doing it through the courts, by suing for defamation.
On Thursday (November 7), Sherman sued accuser Thalia Graves and her attorneys, including Gloria Allred.
The suit claims that Graves made “outrageous, disgusting, and life altering statements and publishings…without any regard for the truth” in her lawsuit against Diddy and Sherman, which was filed in September.
“Joseph Sherman has never met Thalia Graves, let alone raped her,” it continues.
One of the suit’s main points is that Sherman could not have been involved, since he stopped working for Diddy in 1999, two years before the alleged assault Graves recounts in her suit — and, he says, he was persona non grata at Bad Boy, not even allowed on the premises, because he left to work for a rival, Def Jam.
“Plainly said, the Plaintiff, Joseph Sherman, was not even allowed into Bad Boy records studios or near Sean Combs after 1999. Consequently, he could not have videotaped or raped Thalia Graves,” the suit reads.
The suit also includes what are alleged to be Instagram DMs from Graves to Sherman, in which she says: “if you are willing to give me a statement about my rape against Puffy then the attorneys won’t go after you for revenge porn or distribution of a sexual act without consent.”
That’s a reference to another claim in Graves’ suit: that her former boyfriend allegedly revealed to her that Diddy and Sherman had shown him a video of the assault — and that the two had a habit of doing this and selling the resulting videos.
“These statements imply that Defendant, Thalia Graves, is aware that Plaintiff, Joseph Sherman, is innocent of any alleged sexual assault but is attempting to leverage baseless allegations as part of her broader litigation strategy,” Sherman’s lawsuit reads.
In a post on Instagram, Sherman shared footage of the immediate aftermath of filing the suit.
“Let the war began I want a 100 million,” he captioned the post. “My first lawsuit two more coming.”
In another post, he wrote: “[M]ore lawsuits on the way for the bloggers and people that thought they slander my name with no repercussion.”
Sherman’s attorney Darnell D. Crosland of the CROSLANDLAWGROUP, LLC shared a statement with HipHopDX about the suit.
“When we think of the [Me Too] movement we must not forget the thousands of men who have been falsely accused who are screaming [Me too]. Innocent victims of false claims that continue to suffer as a result. And these wrongly accused men aren’t the only victims of false claims, in fact, the thousands of women who are truly sexually assaulted are hurt by these financially motivated claims, because no one hears their cries.
“The defendants in this lawsuit need to be held responsible for their actions and they need to understand that a ‘cash grab’ based on false claims hurts more people than they can imagine in more ways than they can imagine.”
HipHopDX also reached out to Gloria Allred, who had no comment.
