I work with sex trafficking victims. Here's how Diddy's trial could help them.
I work with sex trafficking victims. Here's how Diddy's trial could help them. | Opinion As the public watches Diddy's trial unfold, another audience will be, too: Current victims of human trafficking who don't yet recognize their own exploitation.
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Diddy news: Prosecutors add new charges to criminal case in indictment
Embattled music mogul Sean "Diddy" Combs was hit with two additional sex crimes charges ahead of his May trial in New York City.
This column discusses sex trafficking. If you or someone you know is in danger or in an unsafe situation, the National Human Trafficking Hotline can help. Advocates are available 24/7 by calling 1-888-373-7888 or texting 233733.
With Sean 'Diddy' Combs' trial for sex trafficking charges now underway, the public will be exposed to a rare, high-profile human trafficking case. But beyond the spectacle, there's an invisible audience paying close attention: current victims of human trafficking who don't yet recognize their own exploitation.
At Restore NYC, an anti-trafficking organization serving thousands of survivors across the United States, cases like Combs' often raise the same question from our community: If they weren't locked in a basement or chained to a bed, why didn't they just leave?
The answer to that question often varies across cases. Sometimes victims don't report their trafficker due to a fear of deportation. Others are tethered to their trafficker by housing instability, abusive relationships or lack of income. But a surprising number of victims stay in these situations because they simply don't know they're being trafficked.
How can this happen?
Movies, TV romanticize sex trafficking – and get it wrong
Movies and TV shows tend to present two extremes for sex trafficking: an unsuspecting (usually white) woman kidnapped by a violent trafficker and rescued by Liam Neeson, or a romanticized, glamourous depiction of a (usually white) woman's life in the commercial sex trade that in many cases would also meet the legal definition for sex trafficking.
Both narratives create an unrealistic expectation of what trafficking 'should' look like. When victims don't see their own experiences reflected in these narratives, it becomes more difficult to reach out for support.
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These portrayals flatten the complex realities of trafficking victims into the helpless damsel or the empowered seductress.
In doing so, they erase the experience of millions of victims, especially women of color, who don't fit neatly into these buckets.
The sensationalizing of trafficking in media through high-drama abduction scenarios also distracts from the slow-burn exploitation. It often looks like economic coercion, emotional manipulation or grooming. It happens in broad daylight, in cities like ours, with men in power preying on women's vulnerabilities.
When inaccurate media representations become our cultural standard for human trafficking, real victims will continue to go unseen and even blamed for their own exploitation.
With Black and Latina women making up 88% of trafficking survivors at Restore, it's increasingly important we bring their stories to life in more accurate and nuanced ways.
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Traffickers exploit disconnect between real life and pop culture
'I've worked with victims that initially didn't understand they were being trafficked – they just thought this is what they had to do in order to hustle and get ahead,' said Lenore Schaffer, Restore's chief program officer. 'Victims will sometimes have an entire lifetime of being conditioned to normalize the objectification of their bodies. Traffickers know how to capitalize on this.'
Opinion: Sean 'Diddy' Combs goes by many names. After Cassie video, add 'abuser' to the list.
Decades of pop culture have blurred the line between empowerment and exploitation. Three 6 Mafia's 'It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp' won an Oscar for their lyrical portrayal of pimping as a gritty but noble hustle instead of a system of exploitation. 'The Salty Pimp' continues to be one of Big Gay Ice Cream Shop's top selling flavors, despite backlash for a name that shrugs at the reality of sexual exploitation.
This casual normalization helps traffickers remain invisible and victims unaware of their exploitation. When pimps are turned into popular Halloween costumes, their real-life violence is often misunderstood.
The disconnect between lived experience and public narrative is one traffickers exploit – and it keeps survivors from identifying what's happening to them.
'A survivor I worked with once stayed with her trafficker for years because he introduced her to industry contacts and presented her with lavish gifts. Even though she recognized this was sexual exploitation, in her eyes, it wasn't trafficking because she felt it was a mutually beneficial relationship,' said Schaffer.
As the public watches the Combs case unfold, it's crucial we resist the urge to fit victims into familiar molds. This moment marks an opportunity for reflection on how our collective culture, media and language can downplay violence against women.
Let's ensure the real experiences of trafficking survivors, especially women of color, are not erased in favor of spectacle.
Beck Sullivan, a licensed clinical social worker, is the CEO of Restore NYC, where she has led nationally recognized programs that earned the 2024 Presidential Award for Extraordinary Efforts to Combat Trafficking in Persons. She has more than 16 years of experience in the anti-trafficking field, including prior roles at the Bilateral Safety Corridor Coalition and as cofounder of the Valley Against Sex Trafficking (VAST).
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Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
Can you really separate the art from the artist? Science says you can't, but a new poll suggests the answer is complicated.
Sean 'Diddy' Combs was once one of the biggest names in American pop culture. For a time, his presence was almost inescapable. Not only did he have several hits of his own, under his former stage name Puff Daddy, but his record label, Bad Boy Entertainment, produced some of the iconic hip-hop albums of the 1990s and 2000s. He also founded a TV network, launched a successful clothing company, became the face of a popular liquor brand and threw parties that some of the world's biggest celebrities rearranged their calendars to attend. Today, though, his public persona has been overwhelmed by allegations of Today, though, his public persona has been overwhelmed by allegations of how he has conducted his private life. Combs is currently standing trial in Manhattan on five criminal counts, including sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy. Federal prosecutors have accused him of carrying out an extended campaign of abuse against women that included coercing them to participate in marathon sex parties, while using threats of violence and the power of his business empire to cover up his misdeeds. If convicted, he could end up spending the rest of his life in prison. Combs is far from the first celebrity to face allegations of horrific personal conduct. Whenever such claims arise, they force us to reconsider a beloved artist's work in light of their alleged behavior. Just how much do charges of misconduct affect how people view an artist's creative output? Can we really 'separate the art from the artist,' or does one's personal behavior inevitably tarnish their creative legacy? These questions have existed for a long time. Some of history's greatest artists have been accused of doing truly awful things. But the debate has become more pointed in recent years, in the wake of the #MeToo movement and the backlash against cancel culture. Combs's case shows how complicated these situations can be. When the allegations against him first came to light, streaming numbers for his music plummeted, but they actually increased in the wake of his arrest. A new Yahoo News/YouGov poll offers a glimpse into how Americans make sense of celebrities' behavior and how it influences their entertainment decisions. Rather than providing a definitive picture, the survey of 1,560 adults shows just how complicated these considerations can be and how divided we are in how we respond when the artists we love are accused of conduct we abhor. In the survey, which was conducted May 22-27, an overwhelming majority of people said that an artist's personal behavior can influence their choice of whether to watch their movies, listen to their music or otherwise engage with their art. That doesn't mean that they write off the work of any celebrity who faces allegations of misconduct, though. For most people, the specific circumstances are what matter. Sixty-seven percent of respondents said their choices depend on the artist and what they're accused of. Only 21% said that they will automatically abandon artists who do things they don't approve of 'because you can't separate the artist from the art.' Just 12% believe an artist's personal behavior doesn't matter at all 'because the art and the artist are separate things.' While it's clear that an artist's actions inform how most people view their work, that doesn't necessarily mean they will avoid it entirely if they disapprove of their behavior. Less than half of respondents (47%) said they have personally stopped consuming at least one artist's work because of things they have done. Nearly the same number (45%) said they have not. The nature of allegations matters as well. Sexual assault involving children was unsurprisingly the top reason respondents listed for why they stopped consuming an artist's work. Extreme political views, sexual assault involving adults, racism and domestic violence also ranked high on the list of 'cancelable' offenses. While all of these various factors appear to matter to some degree, it's not clear which one carries the most weight when it comes to specific artists. For example, sexual assault against children is viewed as the most egregious offense, but just 11% of people in the survey said they had stopped listening to music from Michael Jackson — who was accused of molesting multiple children during his lifetime. Three times as many people (33%) said they had stopped consuming R. Kelly's work in light of a string of sexual abuse claims involving minors that he has faced. Recency, familiarity, age and politics play a role here too. When given a list of celebrities who have faced high-profile allegations of wrongdoing, more respondents said they had stopped consuming Combs's art than any of the other options, possibly because reminders of those accusations are all over the news right now. Generational differences showed up in the results as well. Americans over 65 were more forgiving across every type of allegation — with the exception of drug use or excessive drinking, which they viewed as disqualifying at a higher rate than any other age group. Older people were also more likely to say they had stopped consuming work from Bill Cosby, who was a massive star in their generation before being accused of sexual assault by dozens of women. Despite Gen Z's purported reputation for hypersensitivity, younger people were either equally likely or less likely than millennials or Gen X-ers to say that they would stop consuming an artist's work across all different types of allegations — including anti-LGBTQ statements and sexism. At first glance, politics doesn't seem to be that big of a factor, but its influence really starts to show when you zoom in a bit. Democrats, Republicans and independents were equally likely to say they had abandoned an artist because of their behavior. Which artists and the kind of behavior varies dramatically, though. Just 5% of Republicans said that anti-LGBTQ statements had caused them to stop consuming an artist's work, compared with 34% of Democrats. GOP voters were also less likely to cite racism, sexism, domestic violence and sexual assault involving adults as reasons to give up an artist. The same is true when it comes to most individual artists, with particularly large gaps for celebrities who have expressly aligned themselves with President Trump. For example, seven times as many Democrats (30%) as Republicans (4%) said that they have stopped watching films starring Mel Gibson, who has faced various accusations of making antisemitic and racist comments statements over the years and whom Trump named as a 'special ambassador' to Hollywood in the early days of his second term. Researchers have been studying whether humans can separate art from artists for decades. For the most part, they have found that we can't. Studies consistently show that our moral judgments on individuals influence how we view things that are associated with them. Part of that is the result of high-level thinking, where we carefully weigh our appreciation of the art against our distaste for the artist's actions. But the process also happens at a more visceral, unconscious level. In one famous experiment from the 1990s, most test subjects refused to put on a sweater after being told to imagine that it belonged to Adolf Hitler, under the illogical belief that they would somehow be contaminated by his evil if they did. 'If a person does something that I find to be really repugnant, morally speaking, then I will have an unconscious sense that close, intimate contact with things they've created may affect or corrupt me in some vague, hard to specify manner,' James Harold, a professor of philosophy at Mount Holyoke College and the author of the book Dangerous Art, told Yahoo News. Thanks to technological advances, we can now see this process at work on a biological level. Researchers in Germany recently found that people instinctively viewed classical paintings as lower in quality when they were told about bad things the artists had done in their lives. 'These artworks are processed differently at the neural level. ... This shift in brain activity happens very quickly, during the early stages of perception and emotional processing,' Hannah Kaube, a doctoral candidate at the Humboldt University of Berlin who helped lead the study, told Yahoo News. 'This suggests that the effect is not just conscious, but occurs spontaneously and automatically.' Brain scans showed that the unflattering information caused an instant emotional change in the subjects, reflecting that they now viewed the work more negatively. Interestingly, though, those same scans found that work by 'bad' artists was also more arousing. Brain activity that's typically associated with more thoughtful, deliberate thinking was not triggered by the information. 'People may not even realize their feelings about the artwork are being shaped by what they know about the artist — but their brain shows that it is,' Kaube said. So if nearly all of us carry our judgments of an artist's behavior with us when we consume their art, why are some people able to still enjoy it while others feel obligated to give it up? 'The concept of 'separating art from the artist' can be considered along two interconnected dimensions: whether people should separate the two (an ethical question), and whether they actually do (a psychological one),' said Kaube, who only focuses on the second dimension in her research. Some of the explanations are straightforward. It's a lot easier to shun an artist if you're not a fan of their work in the first place or if you're of an age where they weren't really a big star to your generation. It's probably not a big ask for the average 20-year-old to stop watching Woody Allen movies over his adopted daughter's claim that he sexually abused her, for example. There's also the fact that a lot of people simply don't believe that the allegations against a celebrity are true or don't think that what they're accused of is that big of a deal. Some celebrities have very successfully turned public opinion in their favor after being targeted with allegations of misconduct. Our reactions are also a reflection of how we see ourselves, Harold argues. 'Much of the separating the art from the artist is expressive behavior,' he said. 'It has to do with a person's self-conception, who they think they are. ... We associate art as expressing something about the humanity of the person who made it, and so then you don't want to be affiliated with that human being.' External factors can also play a big role. Shared fandom can be a potent source of community in the digital age. So when allegations come out, fan groups often process the news collectively, which can influence any individual member's decisions. 'Refusing to engage with the work of somebody who you recently learned has done something bad can be a way of expressing your concern for other members of the group,' Harold said. Those dynamics can work in the other direction too, pushing members to keep engaging with a maligned artist in order to avoid losing a community they care about. Institutions can also influence our responses. When a museum, studio or entertainment venue announces that they will no longer work with a certain artist, that sends a broad message that their actions are disqualifying. If that doesn't happen, it can create the implication that the artist's behavior might not be so bad. One of the nation's most powerful institutions, the legal system, still hasn't registered its final judgment on Combs, which could prove to be the most important factor in how the public ultimately views his music. The accusations have already affected his standing. Nearly half of the respondents in our poll (47%) said the allegations had changed the way they view him as an artist. In the end, though, it's reasonable to expect that a guilty verdict would cause even more people to question whether his songs really deserve a spot on their playlists.
Fox News
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Billy Bush says Diddy's alleged balcony incident echoes 'sick' behavior in hit TV show
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"Her allegations are that he hung her over a balcony, which is like, what are you watching too much 'Sopranos' here?" Bush said. "Like, this is such mafia sick s--t. It's, I can't believe it, but it reminds me of like when Michael Jackson had "Blanket" over the balcony in some Rome or Paris hotel (sic). And then Suge Knight hung Vanilla Ice over the balcony." In a 1999 episode of "Behind the Music," Vanilla Ice clarified that the balcony allegations against Suge Knight were unfounded. "He didn't hang me off from any balcony," the rapper said. "The story's been kind of blown out of proportion, and I want to clarify that Suge and I have no bad feelings towards each other." "It's the ultimate, like, it's the ultimate gangster move," Bush added of Bongolan's allegations against Diddy. "Who makes that up? I mean, he clearly did, and it's sick. So I think it was helpful as far as painting him as extremely violent." Bush continued, "I still don't know if Diddy is a sealed, done deal. He's not arguing that he's a domestic violence perpetrator and general bad dude." Allegations about the incident were detailed in a November 2024 lawsuit Bongolan filed against Diddy where she requested $10 million in damages. Bongolan filed the lawsuit to "seek justice for what happened to me," she told the court. She said her lawyer wrote the complaint and that the words were not the same as what she had testified to. Her recollection of the events that night were marred, according to Diddy's lawyers. Nicole Westmoreland, a Diddy defense attorney, asked Bongolan several questions about Cassie's 29th birthday. Bongolan replied, "I don't remember" to most of the questions, which included if she was on drugs. She later told Westmoreland that she couldn't remember telling the government if the incident happened at a party or if they were just hanging out. "Drug use is not great for memory, and we're dealing with a marginalized character here," Bush said. "At the end of the day, I don't think the drug use thing is a big shocker to anyone on the jury … and you know, Diddy definitely partied with the drugs." WATCH: BILLY BUSH LIKENS DIDDY ALLEGATIONS TO MAFIA TACTICS He added, "I don't think that is going to come into account at all. It's just the actions of what happened. They don't excuse his actions. And I don't think that they discount her claims either. I really don't." In a federal indictment unsealed on Sept. 17, Diddy was charged with racketeering conspiracy (RICO); sex trafficking by force, fraud or coercion; and transportation to engage in prostitution. If found guilty, he faces a minimum of 15 years behind bars or a maximum sentence of life in prison. He has maintained his innocence throughout the trial, in which witnesses have testified to alleged rape, sexual assault, severe physical abuse, forced labor and drug trafficking. The trial is expected to wrap by July 4. During the opening statements of Diddy's trial, defense attorney Teny Geragos asked the jury to consider the federal charges, not the choices of an at-times violent man. "Sean Combs is a complicated man, but this is not a complicated case," Geragos told the court. "This case is about love, jealousy, infidelity and money. This case is about voluntary adult choices made by capable adults and consensual relationships. This case is about those real-life relationships, and the government is trying to turn those relationships into a racketeering case, a prostitution case and a sex trafficking case. It will not work." Geragos told the jury that they would hear the "basics" through the lens of various witnesses and evidence. Most importantly, though, jurors would get the opportunity to "finally" hear the facts about the case. "I say that because this case is not about what you've heard on the news, read in the news or have seen on social media for the past year and a half," Geragos said. "This case is not about what civil attorneys looking for a payday are trying to make my client out to be. There has been a tremendous amount of noise around this case for the past year, and it is time to cancel that noise and hear and see the evidence that will be presented in this courtroom." She noted that Diddy "has a bad temper" and at times gets "so angry or so jealous that he is out of control," but she emphasized that the "Victory" rapper was not charged with "being mean." "He is not charged with being a jerk. He's charged with running a racketeering enterprise," Geragos told the jury. "And though there was violence that you are going to hear about, you already have, that violence is not part of any RICO. That violence is not connected to sex trafficking and that violence is not prostitution."
CNN
7 hours ago
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'Absolutely Unacceptable': Judge Calls Out Diddy's Nods To Jury - Laura Coates Live - Podcast on CNN Audio
'Absolutely Unacceptable': Judge Calls Out Diddy's Nods To Jury Laura Coates Live 47 mins A judge rebuked Sean 'Diddy' Combs for his behavior in court, and a woman using the pseudonym 'Jane' alleged that Combs pressured her to have sex with other men as part of her testimony at the hip-hop mogul's federal criminal trial. The key testimony from Jane comes as the prosecution seeks to show Combs and his inner circle used violence, lies, drugs, and other means to coerce Jane and Cassie Ventura into participating in sexual performances with male escorts known as 'hotel nights' or 'Freak Offs.'
