A former model, Crystal McKinney, has filed a lawsuit allegedly accusing American rapper, Sean “Diddy” Combs, of sexually assaulting her in 2003.

McKinney sued the rapper on Tuesday under New York’s Victims of Gender Motivated Violence Protection Act, which permits victims to make claims regardless of when the assault occurred until 2025.

This happened just a few days after the American rapper posted a video on his Instagram page apologising for attacking his ex-girlfriend Cassandra “Cassie” Ventura, a singer, model and actress after CCTV footage showed him kicking and pushing her in a hotel hallway in 2016.

According to McKinney, she was 22 years old when she was introduced to Diddy by a fashion designer whose name was not disclosed at a Men’s Fashion Week event in Manhattan.

In the filed lawsuit, the model stated that the designer “began to direct Plaintiff’s appearance, as he sought to ensure Combs found her attractive.”

The model narrated that Diddy had made suggestive remarks and offered to assist her career and “plied her with alcohol,” after which he invited her to his studio in New York that same night.

McKinney continued that on arriving at the musician’s studio, she met Diddy drinking and smoking marijuana with several other men.

She said that while Diddy offered her some, he told her, “You’ve never had weed like this before,” which she smoked and “later came to understand” was laced with a narcotic or intoxicating substance.

The lawsuit read that after she was “very intoxicated”, Diddy led her to a bathroom, where he forced her to perform oral sex on him and lost consciousness afterwards.

McKinney stated that she “awakened in shock to find herself in a taxicab heading back to the designer’s apartment,” feeling “humiliated and traumatized and without recourse”.

The model stated that following the incident, her modelling chances began to dwindle, and she believed Diddy used his power to “blackball” her in the industry, leading her to attempt suicide in a “tailspin of anxiety and depression”.

McKinney added that she filed the lawsuit to seek “justice for herself and for any of other Combs’ victims”.