Diddy dodges civil suit over accused 2018 sexual assault

SAN FRANCISCO (CN) — A federal judge on Tuesday dismissed a lawsuit accusing free agent NFL wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr., Sean “Diddy” Combs and his associates of raping a California woman in 2018.

In a brief order, U.S. District Judge Rita Lin, a Barack Obama appointee, dismissed the lawsuit for failure to prosecute.

“The court has warned plaintiffs several times that the case would be dismissed under Rule 41(b) if they continued to miss the required deadlines,” Lin wrote.

Plaintiff Ashley Parham, joined in the lawsuit by two Doe plaintiffs, has still not filed proof of service indicating any defendant in the case has been served, despite having the deadline extended multiple times.

The plaintiffs have also been unable to retain new counsel after their original attorney withdrew from the case in late September.

“The barrier to obtaining counsel therefore does not appear to be plaintiffs’ capacity to seek counsel, but the willingness of counsel to be retained in the matter,” Lin wrote. “There is no indication that this barrier is likely to resolve.”

The plaintiffs also refused to state their intent to proceed without representation, asking the court instead for more time as they have a “variety of medical difficulties and safety concerns that make it hard to find counsel.” Still, they missed the Dec. 8 deadline Lin set.

Parham filed a lawsuit in May 2024 against Sean “Diddy” Combs, his “right-hand woman” Kristina Khorram, Shane Pearce, a man she met in February 2018 in a California bar, and four other unidentified Jane and John Does.

Parham claims that Combs and his associates raped her on March 23, 2018, as retaliation for a comment she made that he was involved in the murder of rapper Tupac Shakur. She said she told police about her assault, but was ignored.

In the amended complaint filed in March 2025, Parham named several additional defendants, including Beckham, and comedian Drew Desbordes, known as Druski, who she claimed took part in her assault and “‘willfully ignored’ Diddy’s conduct for their own personal economic benefit.”

In a motion for sanctions, Beckham called the accusations “frivolous and inconsistent with available facts,” and that any inquiry would have confirmed the claims were “entirely inconsistent with prior police reports and other sworn testimony.” He further said that evidence has confirmed that he was not in the same city as the plaintiff during the reported assault.

He asked the court to award monetary sanctions and to dismiss the complaint against him. However, Lin declined to impose sanctions. Lin found that the plaintiffs’ counsel identified plausible reasons why Parham may have been hesitant to name all of her accused attackers and found there was no evidence at the time the amended complaint was filed that suggested Beckham wasn’t present during the assault.

In a March response to the lawsuit, Beckham said in a statement on X, formerly Twitter, that there is “absolutely no truth to those allegations” and that “I do not know and have never met the person that filed the suit.” He added that he had never been to Orinda, California, and “would never do anything like that to anyone.”

Andrew Jablon, attorney representing Beckham, said the athlete and his counsel are pleased that “these scurrilous allegations can finally be put to rest."

The dismissal affirms Beckham’s position that he never should have been named as a defendant, according to Jablon.

“And there certainly was no reasonable basis for maintaining the action against him once plaintiff’s attorneys had been provided with uncontroverted evidence that Mr. Beckham — who has never met plaintiff and never been to the area in question — was hundreds of miles away at the time of the alleged assault,” Jablon wrote in an email.

The complaint also prompted an outcry in Hawaii, with Maui County Mayor Richard Bissen requesting that a police officer named in the complaint take administrative leave. The plaintiffs accused Maui County Police Chief John Pelletier of interfering with Parham’s attempt to report her assault. The plaintiffs said Pelletier managed security for Combs’ “Las Vegas safe houses” during his previous tenure as a police officer in Las Vegas.

In July, a Manhattan jury acquitted Combs on racketeering and sex trafficking charges and convicted him on just two counts of Mann Act Transportation — prostitution crimes that carry maximum sentences of 10 years each.

On Oct. 3, a federal judge in Manhattan sentenced Combs to just over four years in prison.

Counsel for the rest of the defendants did not respond to a request for comment before press time and the plaintiffs could not be reached for comment.

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