Diddy's trial is more proof the legal system can't handle domestic violence

The Guardian

3 days ago

Wouldn't it be nice if, just now and again, bad things happened to bad people? Wouldn't it be refreshing if violence against women was taken seriously instead of being treated like one big joke?
Yes, but alas, that is not the world we live in. Over here in reality, we've got an adjudicated sexual predator as president, a defense secretary who has been accused of sexual assault and aggressive behaviour towards his second wife, and a supreme court where a third of the male justices who get a final say on legal issues have been accused of sexual misconduct.
And we've got Sean 'Diddy' Combs: the disgraced entertainer who escaped this week with what many people consider to be a slap on the wrist after a New York jury delivered a mixed verdict in his seven-week federal sex-trafficking trial. The trial was focused on allegations that Combs had coerced two women, including his ex-girlfriend Casandra 'Cassie' Ventura, to take part in 'freak offs': drug-fueled sexual encounters involving hired male prostitutes and humiliating acts.
I don't want to downplay the Diddy verdict. While Combs was acquitted on the most serious federal charges, of racketeering conspiracy and sex-trafficking, he was still found guilty of the lesser charges of transporting the male prostitutes he allegedly forced women to have sex with across state lines. The disgraced musician was also denied bail and is facing a barrage of new civil cases alleging abuse and assault. While we still don't know how much time (if any) Combs will be sentenced to, he did not get off scot-free.
I also don't want to boil the results of a complex trial down to 'misogyny'. It would be overly simplistic to say that the jury of eight men and four women in the Diddy trial simply didn't believe women. The fact is Diddy was not on trial for being an abuser, or a bad person, or for his highly publicized battery of Cassie, one horrifying instance of which was caught on camera and the subject of a previous civil case. He was on trial for a specific set of charges, the most serious of which the prosecution did not have enough evidence to prove.
But this is not to say that justice was done. Far from it. The trial is yet another demonstration that the legal system is ill-equipped to deal with the complexities of intimate partner violence, the ways in which survivors deal with trauma, and the uneven power dynamics weaponized by abusers. If we had better legal frameworks for domestic violence and coercive control, perhaps prosecutors would not have turned to trafficking charges to try to secure justice.
'Trafficking cases come with longer statutes of limitations, more severe penalties and more public support,' notes the human-trafficking expert Kimberly Mehlman-Orozco in USA Today. 'And existing domestic violence statutes are often outdated or ill-equipped to address coercive control, especially when the abuser is wealthy, powerful and legally savvy.'
It's not just the law that is ill-equipped to address coercive control – this complex issue is still minimized by some factions of the media. A Washington Post piece (written by two women), for example, described Combs as a 'music producer turned modern-day Gatsby', a framing which casts the 'freak offs' as hedonism rather than something more sinister. The writer Sarah Kendzior notes that allusions to F Scott Fitzgerald's Jay Gatsby have been used to soften the image of high-level sexual predators like Jeffrey Epstein for decades.
In the courts of public opinion, men like Combs are also far too often seen as playboys rather than predators. After the verdict on Wednesday, CNN reported that several spectators could be seen pouring baby oil on themselves, along with wearing T-shirts reading: A Freako is not a RICO (RICO is a reference to the racketeering charges).
Perhaps what is most depressing about the Diddy verdict is that it is all too easy to imagine a path in which Combs finds his way back to prominence in public life. Donald Trump hasn't ruled out pardoning Diddy and it is not inconceivable that he might; birds of a feather stick together, after all. Chris Brown still has a music career despite being charged with felony assault following a domestic violence incident when he beat up Rihanna in 2009. Brett Ratner is directing the very expensive Prime Video documentary about Melania Trump despite being accused of sexual misconduct by six women (he has denied the claims). With enough money, good lawyers and the right connections, you can get away with almost anything.
The indictment against Diddy is titled United States of America v Sean Combs, AKA 'Puff Daddy', AKA 'P.Diddy', AKA 'Diddy', AKA 'PD', AKA 'Love'. And yet some people think that calling someone by their preferred pronouns is too complicated.
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Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist