A bodyguard at the center of a sexual assault lawsuit against Sean “Diddy” Combs has sued the accuser and her attorney, Gloria Allred, for defamation, denying that he was the man who allegedly assaulted her and filmed the alleged attack.
Joseph Sherman sued Thalia Graves in New York federal court on Friday, after she filed suit against him and Combs in late September, alleging the two drugged, bound and violently raped her at the Bad Boy Entertainment founder’s recording studio, Daddy’s House, in 2001.
Graves claimed that years of trauma compounded when she learned in late November 2023 — days after Casandra “Cassie” Ventura filed her bombshell sex trafficking lawsuit against Combs — that, per the lawsuit, “Combs and Sherman had video-recorded the horrific rape twenty-two years before and had shown the video to multiple men.” Graves claimed that she had learned of the tape from an ex-boyfriend, who also allegedly told her that the video was sold as pornography.
However, Sherman claims that everything in Graves’ suit is “utterly and entirely false,” saying he stopped working for Combs in 1999 and has never even met Graves. “The Plaintiff has never met the Defendant, never engaged [in] any sexual or non-consensual physical interaction with her, and did not participate in the events alleged,” the countersuit alleges. “Simply put, there is no possible way that the Plaintiff Joseph Sherman, touched, taped, or had anything to do with Thalia Graves.”
Attorney Gloria Allred (L) and Thalia Graves (R) during a press conference on September 24, 2024
Frederic J. Brown/AFP/Getty Images
As part of his lawsuit, Sherman included 12 pages of screenshots that he claimed were between him and Graves on November 29th, 2023, where Graves allegedly “sought to persuade Joseph Sherman to serve as her witness against Mr. Combs.”
In the messages purported to be from Graves, the sender begins by questioning if Sherman had worked for Combs and directs Sherman to call their number. “If you will be my witness against Diddy, then my attorneys will leave you out of any proceedings,” reads an alleged message from Graves. “I will make sure that the state does not pick up charges or rape charges against you.”
Sherman claims he has suffered reputational and financial harm from the accusations, and is suing Graves, Allred, and other parties under multiple counts, including defamation, emotional distress, negligence and abuse of process, among others. (Allred and Graves did not immediately reply to Rolling Stone‘s request for comment.)
Graves is among nearly 30 people suing Combs and some of his associates for sexual abuse, following Ventura starting the domino effect last November. Sherman is the first defendant to countersue an accuser.
Combs, 55, was arrested in Manhattan on Sept. 16, on charges of sex trafficking, racketeering conspiracy and transportation to engage in prostitution. In a 14-page indictment, Southern District of New York prosecutors said Combs ran a criminal enterprise that engaged in “unlawful acts of violence including sexual violence,” interstate transportation for the purposes of prostitution, narcotics distribution, arson, bribery, kidnapping, and obstruction of justice.
Prosecutors said a main function of the alleged enterprise was to “lure female victims into Combs’ orbit, often under the pretense of a romantic relationship,” and then use “force, threats of force and coercion” to make the victims engage in “elaborate and produced sex performances” that Combs called “freak offs.”
