What is sex trafficking?The rapper Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs is currently in a New York prison awaiting trial in May on charges of sex trafficking, transportation for prostitution and racketeering with conspiracy. He denies all the allegations.We’re going to be examining what each of these federal charges mean over the coming weeks, hearing from experts and people affected in other cases involving these charges. We’re starting with sex trafficking.Anoushka Mutanda-Dougherty speaks to Elizabeth Geddes who prosecuted R. Kelly, Dr Marcel Van Der Watt, president at the National Centre on Sexual Exploitation in the US, along with Lala Appleberry from Survivor Network NC.The Diddy on Trial podcast is here to investigate the rumours, confront the theories, and give you the answers that you need.We also want YOU to be part of the conversation. Have you any burning questions about the cases or the upcoming trial? Heard a theory that doesn’t sit right with you? Get in touch now via WhatsApp: 0330 123 555 1.Presenter: Anoushka Mutanda-Dougherty Series Producer: Laura Jones Sound Design: Richard Hannaford Production Coordinator: Hattie Valentine Editor: Clare FordhamCommissioning Editor: Rhian Roberts Assistant Commissioner: Will Drysdale Commissioning Producer: Adam Eland Commissioning Assistant Producer: Rechmial MillerSean ‘Diddy’ Combs - who has also gone by the names Puffy, Puff Daddy, P Diddy, Love, and Brother Love - emerged into the hip-hop scene in the 1990s. He founded Bay Boy Records, which launched the careers of the Notorious B.I.G. and Mary J Blige.His current legal issues began when he was sued by his ex-girlfriend Casandra Ventura, also known as Cassie, in late 2023. She accused him of violently abusing and raping her. That lawsuit was settled for an undisclosed amount a day after it was filed, with Mr Combs maintaining his innocence.His controversial history with Ms Ventura resurfaced in 2024, when CCTV footage emerged showing Mr Combs kicking his former girlfriend as she lay on a hotel hallway floor in 2016.Multiple people have filed lawsuits accusing Mr Combs of sexual assault, with accusations dating back to 1991. He denies all claims.In his criminal case, he faces federal charges of racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking by force, fraud or coercion, and transportation to engage in prostitution, and is accused of kidnapping, drugging and coercing women into sexual activities, sometimes by using firearms or threatening them with violence.In a raid on his Los Angeles mansion, police found supplies that they said were intended for use in orgies known as “freak offs”, including drugs and more than 1,000 bottles of baby oil. Mr Combs denies all the charges.
Chapter 1: What are the charges against Sean 'Diddy' Combs?
The rapper Sean Diddy Combs is currently inside the Metropolitan Detention Centre in Brooklyn, awaiting trial in May on charges of sex trafficking, transportation for prostitution and racketeering with conspiracy. He denies all the allegations.
We're going to be examining what each of these federal charges means over the coming weeks, hearing from experts and people affected in cases separate to Diddy's. We're starting with sex trafficking. And to be honest, we've heard a lot about this offence in the media in recent years.
A jury in New York has found the British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell guilty on five counts of grooming and trafficking teenage girls for abuse.
R. Kelly was one of the most successful recording artists of the 1990s. He won a Grammy, filled arenas and sold 75 million records.
Today, though, his reputation is lying in tatters and he could spend the rest of his life in jail after a jury in New York found him guilty of trafficking people for him to sexually abuse.
The BBC revealed claims that Mike Jeffries and his partner Matthew Smith sexually exploited and abused men at events they hosted in their New York residencies and hotels around the world. Lawyers for both men have previously denied any wrongdoing.
From conspiracy theories to convictions, sex trafficking cases make headlines and trends on social media. But how much is known about the actual offense and the different forms it can take? So today, we're going to be hearing from a woman who helps survivors of sex trafficking and the lawyer who successfully prosecuted R. Kelly.
But my first guest is Dr. Marcel van der Wat, president at the National Center on Sexual Exploitation in the U.S. Hi, Marcel.
Hi, Anoushka. Thank you for this time, for having this conversation.
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Chapter 2: What is sex trafficking?
Well, sex trafficking at its core revolves around the use of fraud, force, or coercion to exploit people, usually for commercial sex. There's obviously also forced labor, but when you're talking about sex trafficking, there's always the commercial sexual exploitation component to that crime.
so many of the victims in these crimes don't think they are victims or even consider themselves victims they are either parts of the definition of sex trafficking where it talks about the abuse of a position of vulnerability you know where people where a vulnerability is taking advantage of because of factors like social circumstances economic circumstances being pregnant being undocumented
Some of it could be in a nightclub. It could be in a brothel. I've done work elsewhere in the world. Some areas' brothels are legal. In some places, they are not. So it could be a brothel, a strip club, definitely at house parties often where there's a very, very kind of a controlled way of knowing who enters and who doesn't.
and everybody at a venue like that has some value that can be extracted by the the criminal group and sometimes these are just social events in in the public eye you know depending on what the
The purpose is of the party, is it part of a method to build a relationship, to build rapport with a possible investor or an asset, or is it really just to go all out and abuse, exploit, you know, usually women, and in the process entertain, and in the process, again, corruption, complicity, compromising people in order to extract value from them subsequently.
And as we've been sort of hearing about this over the past couple of years in different cases and more in the media, definitely a lot on social media, my view of sex trafficking, when I really sat down and thought about it, is kind of a lot based on the larger sex trafficking rings.
Well, sex trafficking can happen as linear as being trafficked from one house to another house in a street by an individual trafficker, right? It could be an organized criminal group. I mean, the nature of transportation systems and we're looking at technology, et cetera, has really made these groups very, very fluid, very dynamic. These relationships are often relationships of convenience.
Today I use you, tomorrow I don't. There's usually a core group of people working together and the rest is really kind of, you know, you are an investor or you're an asset to this group and it's all about money. And again, really infrequently, it's only sex trafficking.
And when we're talking about sex trafficking and organized crime, you know, you are bound to find some form of official complicity and corruption. So the whole syndicate or the criminal group is geared at making money. So we know that sex trafficking, it's not a recent statistic, but I mean, it generates more than 100 billion US dollars annually. So it's really, it's all about money.
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Chapter 3: How do vulnerabilities play a role in sex trafficking?
It was a possibility that was introduced in the conversations that led up into the moment. with that person, with the trafficker. And then once we got into the space with what we would call a John, there was no defense. It's almost as if the trafficker and that person talked, conversed about what was going to happen. And I was just a willing participant at the time.
It doesn't always have to start off as like intercourse. It can be kissing or groping or touching or other things. And it's gradual, right? Because they're testing the waters to see what they can get away with. And so that happens at one time and then maybe weeks go by and it's like, oh, I never want to do that again.
And you're venting, you're saying, and the trafficker doesn't make you do it again. But then a few weeks later... Hey, we're going to go out of town and he's more direct. We're going to make a lot of money. We're going to go to New York. There's this party we're going to go to. There's all these high earners. There's all these people here, so on and so forth. And we're going to make money.
You spoke there about feelings afterwards going, oh, I don't want to do that again and venting and ranting about it. So you were having feelings of this is uncomfortable. I don't know. I don't like it. How were you justifying it to yourself? You were seeing it as an act of love? You were seeing it as compromise?
This is the hardest part for people to grasp and understand. There's an alliance that this groomer has created because they got into the minds of this very vulnerable person and decided they were going to feel those vulnerabilities. If somebody came to me and said, stop, you're a victim. This is what's happening. I would have been like, yeah, right. You're stupid. That's not true.
This is my boyfriend. What are you talking about? I will do anything for him because he would do anything for me. It's a non-tangible core. Think about like a tie, like you're tied up, but you can't see the ties. They're invisible.
You've got the facade of choice, the myth of choice that he's offered you. What's the exit plan for this? How did you get away?
For me... My mom. I was still 16. I was still minor. So I had some protections. But I have to say, without going into detail, right before my mom found out what was going on, I had been assaulted. And that was kind of the breaking point where I had to tell somebody because I needed help. And it was a friend that I told. And that friend then kind of got my mom. And then that's how she found out.
And so it was this very blunt intervention that not happened. Who knows?
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Chapter 4: What is the impact of intimate relationships on sex trafficking?
That's right. In most of these cases, the primary evidence are the witnesses who take the stand and tell the jury about exactly what happened to them. And they're subject in many instances to really significant cross-examination where their credibility is going to be attacked by the defense and maybe, you know, viewed suspiciously by the jury. But at the end of the day, in most of these cases...
It comes down to whether or not the jury believes. I was going to say women, but it can be men as well. But for the jury to believe the individual who says that she has been or he has been trafficked in some way.
You famously prosecuted the R. Kelly case. Now, R. Kelly is a R&B singer and he was accused of forced labor. Remind me, was that the only charge? Yeah.
He was charged with operating a racketeering enterprise in connection with he committed various types of crimes, including sexual exploitation of minors and forced labor, among other acts.
One of the things that a lot of people took from that that really stuck with people was the testimony of the witnesses who came up, the survivors. That is a lot, as you've just said, there is a lot of pressure on witness testimony there. How on earth do you prepare somebody to speak about something in a really fragile state in such a public manner?
Yeah, witness preparation in those cases is really challenging because generally speaking, the prosecutors and law enforcement agents want to avoid re-victimizing somebody who has already gone through extraordinary trauma. But at the end of the day, in order to prove up
the case, the prosecutor requires the witnesses to come in and take the stand and rehash for the jury in very vivid detail some of the worst days of their lives. It helps when there are multiple witnesses because
It's certainly true that there is safety in numbers, but it's the job of the prosecutor to make sure that the witness is prepared to talk about these very difficult matters in front of a jury and prepared for a cross-examination where it's the defense's job to question that witness and sometimes ask really difficult questions that itself can be extremely traumatic.
Were there any difficulties around this with the R. Kelly case because there were so many eyes on it because he's such a big figure?
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