Joseph Sherman, Diddy’s former bodyguard, has taken legal action in response to accusations that he raped a woman alongside his former employer in 2001. Sherman is suing for defamation in order to clear his name.
On Thursday (November 7), Sherman filed a lawsuit against his accuser, Thalia Graves, and her legal team, including attorney Gloria Allred.
The lawsuit claims that Graves made “outrageous, disgusting, and life altering statements and publishings…without any regard for the truth” in her September filing, which also named Sherman and Diddy as defendants.
The lawsuit further states, “Joseph Sherman has never met Thalia Graves, let alone raped her.”
One of the key arguments in the lawsuit is that Sherman couldn’t have been involved in the alleged incident because he had stopped working for Diddy in 1999, two years prior to the alleged assault. The suit also notes that after leaving Diddy to join rival Def Jam, Sherman was banned from the Bad Boy offices and not allowed on the premises.
“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 lawsuit states.
Additionally, the lawsuit includes what it claims are Instagram direct messages from Graves to Sherman, where she allegedly 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.”
Graves had previously alleged in her lawsuit that her ex-boyfriend told her Diddy and Sherman had shown him a video of the assault and that the two had a habit of recording and selling such footage.
“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.
Sherman shared footage of himself after filing the lawsuit on Instagram, writing:
View this post on Instagram
“Let the war begin I want a 100 million,” he captioned the post. “My first lawsuit two more coming.”
In a separate post, he added: “[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 from CROSLANDLAWGROUP, LLC, issued a statement to HipHopDX about the case.
“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 for comment, but she declined.
