Many alleged they faced abuse at Sean Diddy Combs parties. Now, John Legend’s longtime manager has shared her experience at one of those parties.
Writing in the New York Times, Ty Stiklorius said she expects a positive change in the music industry after a barrage of accusations against the disgraced music mogul.
Her piece was titled The Music Industry Is Toxic. After P. Diddy, We Can Clean It Up, in which she recalled her terrifying experience at one of Diddy’s New Year’s Eve yacht parties with her brother 27 years ago.
Now, as the founder of the management company Friends at Work, she was a college graduate at the time.
She recalled to be “directed into a bedroom by a man,” adding she was “not sure of who he was or if he had any connection to Mr. Combs.”
“To this day, I can’t remember how I managed to talk my way out of that terrifying situation. Perhaps my nervous babbling — ‘My brother’s on this boat, and he’s probably looking for me!’ — convinced him to unlock the bedroom door and let me go,” the 49-year-old continued.
Noting that she believed at the time her “experience was an anomaly” and that it was “just one guy behaving badly at a drunken party.”
In the wake of cases against Sean, the manager realized her experience was not a one-off incident in the music industry.
“After 20 years as a music industry executive… [I now know] what happened that night was no aberration — it was an indicator of a pervasive culture in the music industry that actively fostered sexual misconduct and exploited the lives and bodies of those hoping to make it in the business,” she penned.
Ty also noted her “early experiences with predators, and those that enabled them, nearly led me to give up on the music business,” but her friend John helped change that, who she has managed for two decades.
