August 16, 2025 • 38 mins
The P. Diddy sex trial exposed disturbing allegations of abuse, but also revealed how race, celebrity status, and systemic misogyny shield powerful men from consequences. In this episode, we unpack the complexities of the charges: Why did prosecutors struggle to apply sex trafficking laws, and what does that say about how those laws are actually used?
We explore how the public discourse around "sex trafficking" often misses the mark, and how US trafficking laws are rooted in racist, anti-immigrant moral panics going back over a century. From Cassie as an “imperfect victim” to Diddy as an “imperfect perpetrator,” we break down the legal and cultural narratives that shape how we understand abuse, power, and justice.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:08):
It's time for you and me to stand up for ourselves.
Hello everyone and welcome to Unwashed and Unruly.
This is straight talk from the unwashed masses because reality
is worse than a conspiracy. Today we're talking about Sean
Combs and sex. It's a story about race, anti
woman bias, moral panic, justicesystem, and the history of sex
trafficking laws. I'm your host, Lola Michaels
(00:30):
with bona fide candyman Ezra Saeed.
Hi, everybody. And pop culture deep analyst Cam
Cruise. Hey, hey, what's up, everybody?
You can reach us at unwashedunruly@gmail.com.
So just to get started, the PDD verdict, we're looking at a case
of celebrity race, systemic misogyny, and how that insulates
powerful men from very harsh consequences.
(00:53):
I listened to some of this case.I knew it had credible
allegations of just very disturbing evidence of abusive
and violent behavior. There were a lot of witnesses,
but then prosecutors had troublearguing how toxic abuse in a
long term relationship legally constituted sex trafficking.
So basically the jury had to believe that P Diddy coerced his
partners Cassie and Jane Doe through force and fraud as
(01:14):
criminal exploitation and that it wasn't just a swinger
lifestyle. So what what is about this sex
trafficking story in the P Diddytrial Cam that you got
interested in What what motivated you to talk about it
today? All right, thank you, Lola.
Thank you for that beautiful, beautiful summary.
So the reason I got into it is actually just because I really
(01:35):
like celebrity gossip. So I love celebrity gossip.
There's a lot of murmurs in the industry that P Diddy was
abusive, that he was a predator.And I was like excited to see
that he was finally going to getcaught.
So when the when the trial started and I saw the charges of
sex trafficking, I was actually very surprised because although
(01:56):
I do think that P Diddy is an abusive maniac, I didn't think
he was running a prostitution ring or was involved in a
criminal sex network. So I was just confused by the
charges. And as I listened to the case, I
wanted to learn more about the charges, what the law of sex
trafficking was, and how it fit the case.
So before we get into like the details of the sex trafficking
(02:19):
question and whether or not you actually think he's guilty or
why, can you give some background on the details of the
case? Yeah, sure.
And this is, there's a lot of really, really sensitive stuff
here. And yeah, it's, it's really sad.
There's a lot of horrible details.
So if you're sensitive to this kind of stuff, just kind of get
ready. So I'm going to just go over the
(02:41):
details of the case. I want to give a shout out to
Rotten Mango. That's the podcast that I
listened to, to learn it, learn about this stuff.
The people who made the podcast actually went into the court
every day and created episodes that summarize the testimony of
each day. So it was about like 8 hours of
content. So I feel like they really did
give a really good, accurate picture of what was happening
(03:03):
and what was being said in the courtroom.
So here are the allegations thatDiddy was being accused of.
So the main person who was bringing him up on these charges
is a woman named Cassie. Cassie was somebody who dated
Diddy, I think maybe 10 years ago.
So Diddy started dating Cassie when she was in her early 20s,
and Cassie was an aspiring musician.
(03:25):
So she met Diddy and she, you know, saw an opportunity to
further her music career. But she also really expressed
that they did have a connection.It wasn't about only furthering
her career. She really did like him and love
him. And so they started a
relationship. And after some time in that
relationship, Diddy opened up toher about some of his sexual
(03:46):
proclivities, asking her if she wanted to participate in parties
with other escorts where she would have sex with other men.
And she kind of reluctantly agreed to these things.
She was in love with him, she said, and these were his
fantasies, and she didn't want to shame him about those things
or make him feel bad about them.So she kind of willingly
participated. According to her, she willingly
(04:09):
participated in the first one, and she felt uncomfortable about
it. She didn't really like it.
P Diddy was super, super excitedabout it.
He loved it. It was the greatest thing and it
made him happy. It was an abusive relationship.
Cassie was very concerned about keeping P Diddy happy and a lot
of her behavior and actions centered around not upsetting
him because when he was upset, he was abusive.
(04:31):
So she started engaging in this activity and she felt pressured
too. She felt like she couldn't say
no to this activity when he brought it up and it became
something that they did once a week.
And the details of the freak offs are pretty wild, too.
So Cassie says that she would use drugs, usually ecstasy, to
(04:51):
engage in this activity and thatthese parties would last
anywhere from 36 to 48 hours. And they would hire a handful of
escorts. So they would have like, men
come in, maybe four or five men.The man would have sex with
Cassie while P Diddy watched in the corner and pleasured
himself. After the man finished, then
(05:11):
they would go into another room.So that would happen with the
escorts on rotation. So she would do that with one
escort and then the next escort would start in a few in a little
while and then the next escort in this would go on and on.
And Cassie said that this happened so frequently that she
would start having urinary tractinfections and then she wouldn't
heal from the urinary tract infection and then she would
(05:32):
have to have another freak off. Oh, yeah, I don't know if I
mentioned that these parties were called freak offs.
So she would have another freak off and she would be having to
give oral to people. And when she had sores in her
mouth, Diddy would ask people tourinate on her.
And it was a wholly unpleasant experience for her.
She really, really hated it. Being drugged the entire time is
(05:53):
the only way that she can cope with it.
And she felt pressured to participate in this activity
because she knew it's what Diddywanted.
He would become violent when he didn't get what he wanted.
And he also kind of strung her along.
So she was always kind of waiting for him to release her
records or to help her make thatbreak.
So he definitely used manipulation around her desire
to become a part of the music industry as a way to coerce her
(06:16):
into engaging in this activity. How does this case that you just
described, like how does it fit the charges of sex trafficking?
Like how does that make sense? Yeah.
So that's something that I learned about this.
I had a really different impression of what sex
trafficking was going into this case.
So if I can just stop and ask you guys like what do you think
sex trafficking? What comes to mind when you hear
the term sex trafficking? When I think of it, I think of
(06:39):
what used to be called white slavery, which conjures up
images of women being kidnapped and forced into or coerced into
forced prostitution. Yeah, so there's there was
always a moral panic around it in some way and it was always
tinged with race and immigrationfrom what I know about it.
(07:01):
Yeah, totally. And I and I love that you use,
not that I love kidnapping, don't get me wrong, Ezra, but I
love that you use the word kidnapping because that felt
like a really essential part of what sex trafficking was to me.
But as I learned, the word of the law of sex trafficking is
really different from what my impression was.
So here is the law that applied to the Diddy case.
(07:22):
So this means sex trafficking isdefined as recruiting,
harboring, transporting, providing, or obtaining a person
for the purpose of a commercial sex act through force, fraud, or
coercion. So if we look at the
allegations, they actually do match the definition of sex
trafficking in my opinion. So if we go through some of
(07:44):
those charges specifically, the first part was recruitment and
transportation. And he did recruit women using
his his employees would have to call escorts for him and he
would transport them across state lines, which is
specifically addressed through the Man Act portion of the sex
trafficking law. And he was.
(08:04):
He was found guilty of the Man Act.
He was found guilty of the man Act, yes, and he was found
guilty of prostitution charges, but he was not convicted on sex
trafficking. So yeah, that's why I was just
trying to understand why he wasn't convicting on sex
trafficking and trying to fit figure out exactly how the
charges fit this situation. So we have recruitment and
transportation. I feel like the prosecution did
(08:25):
a really good job of proving those two points.
Coercion, I think is pretty clear.
He used manipulation about her career.
He used the intimidation of violence against her.
He used retaliation against women who had kind of resisted
or try to report him in any way.I think we meet the allegation
(08:47):
of fraud and that he was stringing Cassie along, telling
her that he was going to do certain things for her career
and didn't do those things. So he was misrepresenting that.
And force comes in the in the form of physical violence.
And I think that we can safely say that that's no longer an
allegation because, you know, wehave the the video of P Diddy
attacking Cassie in the hallway.That's something he admits that
(09:10):
happened. So there's not really much
question around the idea of physical force and then
commercial sex act. Clearly, you know, he was paying
for sex. So that fits the charges there
too. OK, so you just proved that he
was guilty of the version of sextrafficking by law.
So why did the jury get it wrong?
Yeah. And I was really, really
(09:31):
surprised when they came up withthe verdict they did because
like I said, I thought they proved it.
But I think that the big, big thing here is there's a really
big, big gap between what peoplethink sex trafficking is and how
it exists in the letter of the law.
So a lot of the news that we seeand a lot of the media that we
see around sex trafficking presents the most extreme
(09:52):
versions of this, the most extreme stories where people are
abducted, people are taking overseas, people are drugged.
So when people hear the word sextrafficking, they're thinking
about shady shadow networks of bad men who are kidnapping
children off the streets. So over time, I think that
builds a very specific picture of what the crime of sex
(10:13):
trafficking looks like, what victimhood looks like and what
perpetration looks like. And I don't think the Diddy case
matched that picture. And I think that kind of clouded
how the jurors saw this case. So you have like the idea that
they're going to go after certain perpetrators and believe
only certain victims. I mean obviously race is a big
(10:34):
factor in this but how does you know anti anti woman bias or
anything like that play a role? Yeah, and that's really, really
important. So the portrait that's creating
by the sensationalism around sextrafficking kind of positions
the victim as this innocent child who is completely has no
autonomy over their situation and is completely powerless, and
(10:56):
the person who's perpetrating these crimes as this, like,
cartoonishly villainous bad guy.And like I said, the case
doesn't really match that. So the first thing I want to
talk about is the idea of perfect victim.
So we first see the term ideal victim in 1986, and it's a term
that's coined by our Norwegian sociologist Nils Christie and
(11:18):
explores how certain crime victims are perceived as more
deserving of empathy and supportin public discourse.
And if I could just continue to read from this definition, this
idealized figure is often portrayed as weak, vulnerable,
and innocent with no responsibility for their
victimization. They are typically engaged in
virtuous activities at the time of the crime and are isolated
(11:38):
from the perpetrator. So like I was saying about the
portrait that's created and the sensationalized media that we
see about sex trafficking, the victim is an innocent child.
They're completely weak. When Cassie met Diddy, she was
not a minor. They were having a consensual
relationship, and she's also black.
So when you match this picture versus the picture of victimhood
(11:58):
that we see in the media, we already see there's some nuance
here and some complications. And it gives space for the
defense to kind of paint Cassie in in a light where maybe she's
not completely blameless in thisscenario.
So I think this issue in the theroles of perpetrator and victim
are clouded here in a few ways. I think the fact that Diddy is
(12:20):
powerful and connected also changes the equation a bit.
And I think the defense capitalized on that dynamic in
that they tried to frame Cassie as a gold digger, somebody who
was really sought fame and moneyover everything else.
And also I think there's a attitude that exists in the
(12:41):
general public that there is a price for fame, that if you're
involved in entertainment, in entertainment industry as a
woman, that there that you should just expect to have to be
sexually exploited or you shouldexpect certain favors as a price
of admission. So I think all of these things
colored people's opinions towards Cassie, and Cassie
wasn't really able to garner thesympathy as the victim.
(13:02):
That's interesting. So what has been the reaction to
the verdict on social media? Social media I, I think is so
interesting and such a wonderfultool in in situations like this
because you can really see a window into what the general
opinion is. And I think that you can totally
see that people did not perceiveCassie as a victim through the
comments on social media. I gathered a bunch of comments
(13:25):
here that show that Cassie failed to gain sympathy and that
people saw her as partially responsible or didn't think of
her as a victim. So if I could read some of those
comments here. The first one says Cassie's
husband has got to be re evaluating his life choices.
Cassie out here making us believe she's innocent.
Cassie ruined her image for 20 mil.
(13:47):
Why are they even saying Cassie's husband like they don't
know who he is? Yeah.
And I think that is there's so much misogyny also in these in
these comments where that because Cassie was involved in
quote UN quote promiscuous activities that her husband
should be ashamed for that. And that's pretty, pretty awful.
(14:10):
The next comment, she is not a victim.
Cassie loved it. Cassie's husband is the real
victim in all of this. I do not wish this even on my
worst enemy. So yeah, you can clearly see,
and I didn't really check the cherry pick these comments.
It's not like I looked through and I tried to pick the worst
ones. This represents the general
sentiment. Everybody kind of sees Cassie as
(14:32):
willing that she was hungry for fame and that she stayed in a
bad situation and that she couldhave left at any time.
And I think that's one of like the, I think that's one of the
areas that the defense really did some great manipulation.
They really worked hard to try to keep any experts out of the
courtroom that could testify on the dynamics of abusive
(14:52):
relationships. They worked really hard to get
off any get any jurors out who had experienced domestic
violence. So kind of maintaining this
facade about what abuse and sex abuse looks like was essential
to their framing of the case. Going back to just the sex
trafficking question and like how it ties in, how has the
(15:13):
legal definition of sex trafficking been applied in the
US? Like what are and, and what are
we looking at? Like is this a real thing?
Is the public perception of it versus the way the law describes
it? What are the actual statistics?
So one of the things that makes this issue really interesting is
that it's very hard to nail downwhat is actually happening.
(15:33):
So here is a statistic that comes from the University of
Texas. According to the University of
Texas, 7079 thousand minors are currently being trafficked in
Texas alone. So we're talking about 80,000
kids. That does not include the
adults. So a huge, huge number and
that's kind of reiterated by theInstitute of the Institute
(15:55):
Against Human Trafficking. According to the Institute
Against Human Trafficking quote,there are hundreds of thousands
and potentially over 1,000,000 victims trapped in the world of
sex trafficking in the United States.
Because of the hidden nature of the crime, it is essentially
impossible to know how many for sure.
So this is a really, really bizarre statistic because the
(16:15):
first part of it is saying there's hundreds of thousands,
maybe millions of people. And then the second part of it
is saying. We don't really don't.
Actually know. So it's very strange, like it
doesn't really make sense. And the fact that there's a
bunch of insubstantiated claims out there is further evidenced
by this quote over here. The National Center for Missing
and Exploited Children had a quote in 2015 saying one in
(16:40):
seven runaways are victims of sex trafficking, and they're
talking about teens here. So the Washington Post
investigated that claim, and they found there was no evidence
at all. In response to that
investigation, they changed the quote to say one in seven
runaways are likely victims of trafficking.
And where that number comes fromis a complete mystery.
Well, yeah. I was going to actually ask you
(17:01):
about that because you have you read all these statistics and
these numbers and how do they get these numbers?
Like are, is there any reality to it?
Is is it based on anything? It's, it's really interesting
because there are all these claims about the prevalence of
sex trafficking, how it's everywhere and how difficult it
is to collect data around it. And I do sympathize with that.
(17:23):
But the ways they use now, I feel like clearly are creating
false positives. So one really good example of
that is the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children
has a hotline you can call to report your missing kid.
So the way this works is when the operator receives that call,
if they get any inkling that sextrafficking is involved, that
child will be marked as a sex trafficking victim.
(17:44):
So. That means it's just subjective.
Well, there is a list of warningsigns.
Would you like like to hear Shared Hope International's list
of warning signs for teenagers? Absolutely.
Get ready for this. This is some really extreme
behavior in teenagers. The first one is unexplained
absences from class. That means you're being sex.
(18:04):
Trafficked. Yeah, exactly.
So apparently we probably all were likely victims of sex
trafficking. My entire junior high school
year. Yes, overly tired in class, less
appropriately dressed than before, which we also know is
just the part of kind of maturing.
Like your dress changes sexualized behavior.
Again, a normal part of development.
(18:26):
Withdrawn, depressed, distractedor checked out.
Brags about making or having lots of money.
It's weird because a lot of those things when you were first
reading them sounded like biasedagainst low income and poor
families because a lot of kids, they're going to school and they
have a lot of distraction at home.
(18:47):
They come from really difficult economic situations.
You know, they don't have enoughto eat.
That's going to affect like how their attention levels are, how
distracted they are, their clothing.
Like all of those things just seem like, well, then who are
who's going to be accused of this exactly?
Exactly. And those are like the people
(19:09):
who come up the most in the system are foster care kids.
And if I can talk more about howthe hotline works, it's actually
pretty alarming. So like I said, if the operator
gets any inkling that you're being sex trafficked, if there's
any warning sign, quote UN quotewarning sign of sex trafficking,
you're marked as a sex trafficking victim.
And also the way that it's tallied is really interesting
because if I have a daughter andshe runs away and I say, oh, she
(19:32):
has an older boyfriend, then she'll be marked as a victim of
sex trafficking. She can come back in 2 hours and
she'll still be considered. She'll still be on that list, so
she's still contributing to the data.
They don't delete it. They don't delete it.
And you can also be counted multiple times.
So if that same person runs awaythe next month, then they'll be
counted again. So there's a lot of instances,
(19:53):
like you were saying, of vulnerable children, kids who
are in foster care situations running away. 6 * a year.
That is counted as six victims of sex trafficking.
So the definition is incredibly broad and and problematic.
Yes. And the way that we collect data
is creating a lot of false positives.
I realized that it is hard to create data around this stuff.
(20:14):
So it's like it's, it's a difficult task, but the way that
we're doing it now really doesn't make any sense.
So it's, I mean, like, to me it sounds like it's going to, it's
a very convenient way of creating a moral panic around
this stuff. Because anytime of there's like
a sexual panic in the US, there's always like another
agenda that's going on. You know, it's some sort of
(20:36):
campaign to implement some sort of like social control or
manipulate people. So like what?
How does this fit into? You're exactly right.
This fits the perfect definitionof a moral panic, because a
moral panic is all about an exaggerated fear about a
perceived threat that may not actually exist.
And when we look at the data, that's exactly what we see.
So in 2017, Homeland Security reported 500 cases of sex
(20:59):
trafficking. And at the same time, NGOs are
reporting ranges from the hundreds of thousands to
1,000,000. So we see a huge discrepancy in
this data and that's where we see that this is not based on
statistics. This is based on people's
emotions. This is reflecting people's
anxiety. And like also this propels
(21:20):
people to feel like that this isa large and unaddressed problem,
that there is a notion that we're insufficiently concerned
about this problem and that thiscrime is happening under our
nose and that police are not doing enough about it.
So this is where we really see this like knee jerk feeling and
how this is starting to be defined as a panic.
And then you have whenever there's other police aren't
(21:42):
doing enough, then there's a justification for the police
cracking down and cracking down more widely.
And that leads to all sorts of. Exactly.
Exactly. And then you have, so I was
thinking about the all the scareand panic like in the 80s and
90s about, you know, that children being kidnapped, about
(22:04):
satanic ritual abuse in preschools.
You know, all of that, which wasa kind of social reaction to
women actually going to work andnot being responsible for
entirely responsible for a childcare at home and a way of
showing that there was a real threat by women breaking from
(22:27):
some sort of domestic like family model or mold or
whatever. Yeah, there's always a campaign
to Save the Children. I think that's something that
existed in the form of Satanic Panic in the 1980s.
It existed in the form of Stranger Danger in the 1990s.
So this panic is not wholly new.It just has a new name.
(22:48):
So this is our version of Stranger Danger for the 2000s.
So like why now though? Like what's the like?
I think in the 80s and 90s we knew why there was a lot of
hysteria about childcare becauseit was an attempt to put women
back into the home and to be theprimary caregivers.
And to say that it was scary to leave your children with daycare
(23:11):
providers because they were inevitably going to perform some
sort of satanic ritual on your child and perform abuse, which
was completely fabricated, of course.
But so there was a, a, a big social context there that was
attempting to put women in theirquote, UN quote place in the
family. Yeah.
So what you're saying is that the this was a manifestation of
(23:34):
anxieties that existed around womanhood and questions around
childcare. And I surprisingly and weirdly
enough, I think this is all panic around immigration.
And it sounds kind of like a stretch, but if we go back and
look at the history of sex trafficking in America, its
roots are in anti immigrant sentiment.
(23:55):
And ultimately these are laws atthe end of the day.
And these are laws that are usedto control movement and to be
able to prosecute people from crossing borders.
Immigration How do sex trafficking laws relate to
immigration? OK, Yeah, All right, so bear
with me. Now, guys, we're going to go
back and we're going to go back to the times when sex
trafficking was first on our minds as people.
(24:17):
And guess what? Surprise, surprise, it's all
about racism. Like most of the laws in America
first start out. So the precursor we see to the
sex trafficking law is somethingcalled the 1870 Act to prevent
the Kidnapping and Importing of Mongolian, Chinese and Japanese
Females for criminal or demoralizing purposes.
That just rolls off the tongue, don't it?
(24:39):
Yep, and you can already see that it's a tool that's being
utilized to control migrant populations.
All right, so then in 1875, there's another act that
includes in its preamble that itwas trying to quote, UN quote,
end the danger of cheap Chinese labor and immoral Chinese women.
(24:59):
And this all, of course, culminates in the Chinese
Exclusion Act of 1882, which prohibited the immigration of
Chinese laborers for 10 years tothe country.
So these laws were being createdto keep Chinese people out and
to control them. So right from the beginning,
these are tools of control. And sex trafficking is a newish
(25:21):
term that's being created to separate it from smuggling.
So smuggling historically has been done for the benefit of the
person who was participating in it.
It was being done at the behest of the person being done it to
it. But trafficking shifts the
criminality from the person who is being smuggled, the person
who's entering a country illegally, to the person doing
(25:42):
the transportation. And as you can see, this is
obviously a much more efficient tool for people who are trying
to prosecute. It's a lot easier to go after
the person who's doing the transporting than it is after to
go after every single person whois here illegally.
So really, right from the beginning, it's a tool that's
used to control migrant populations.
It's weird though, because when you were saying that, I was
thinking about going back to thePDD, that it fits into the
(26:06):
imperfect victim definition because it's like if they're
going to say sex trafficking, but then you have a willing,
quote UN quote willing victim intheir mind, the how they
presented Cassie and and and Jane, then they would be, it
would fall more into like the smuggling definition or would
(26:26):
fall more into like, oh, they voluntarily chose this
relationship. They chose this lifestyle.
It was a swinging lifestyle. And so how can you charge he
did? How can he be the perpetrator of
sex trafficking? Because he wasn't running it as
an enterprise with coercion. Yeah.
And like the we can also question the use of force here
because Cassie was making a choice on some level.
So it really is murky when you think about it in those terms
(26:49):
for sure. So yeah, you're absolutely
right. And then so.
Does that mean So what you were saying about immigration?
So I assume that means like the definition of sex trafficking by
law has changed over the years depending on what the ruling
class really wants to implement,like what who they, which
immigrants are when they need the cheap labor, when they need
(27:11):
someone to come, a population tocome in to perform, like when
there's when they need that hysteria or social control,
obviously the economy. So we're seeing a lot of this
happened today in terms of immigration.
So how did the law change? So one of the interesting things
is the law always reflects the current anxiety of the times.
And I think that's one of the reasons you can really say this
(27:32):
is a moral panic. So the first time or one of the
first times that the term trafficking is used, the actual
term is in the 19 O 4 International Agreement for the
Suppression of White Slight Slave Trafficking.
So that was the idea that that the the problem was that
basically to undermine the deep seated black slavery as being a
(27:54):
foundation of this country and to say that actually like white
slaves where that was the main issue.
They're the victims of awful black people.
The dark skinned riffraff that are invading the country.
Yeah, exactly. So at this time or in this law,
trafficking is defined this way,cross-border movement of white
(28:14):
women and girls by force to seekor drugs for the purpose of
commercial sexual exploitation. So it is specifically for white
women. It is written in the law.
So I'm not speculating about this being a race based law.
It's literally. It's in the, it's in there.
Yeah. And it also, this is how it
defines A victim. A victim is a white woman who is
(28:34):
a victim of the animal lust of the dark racist.
So this is in 1904. This Oh yeah, this leads to the
man Act in 1910. But as you guys know, this is
when slavery has ended. So now interracial relationships
are on the rise and these laws are created around the fear
around that. So they take, yeah, so they take
(28:56):
completely consensual relations and criminal relationship
between black men and white women.
And they need to put black men in their place, quote UN quote,
and uphold the quote, UN quote sanctity of white womanhood.
And so they can say, well, you're trafficking when really
these are just consensual relationships and they're
traveling across state lines. Yep, Yep, And it's a way it's
(29:17):
like a physical, it's like a a legal manifestation of an
anxiety that's kind of existing at the time.
And it's funny that are not funny.
But you're totally right when you touch on the purity of of
white women is if we look at theMan Act of 1910, which is the
culmination of all these other smaller acts.
The Man Act sought to maintain the moral the moral purity of
(29:37):
white women by prohibiting womenfrom crossing state lines for
immoral purposes and criminalizing interracial
couples. In terms of the PDD case, it's
itself I, I think you're by all indications, I think you're
right that he is guilty of obscene abuse of Cassie.
I also think he's wealthy, he's powerful, he's black and that
(30:01):
and he's weird if if nothing else.
And those are ingredients that alot of powerful people in the US
don't like in in a black man. I think he made he, he sort of
became an easy target. And it sounds like from what
you're saying, they kind of overshot by going for the sex
(30:24):
trafficking conviction? As I don't I don't think she's
saying that I feel like. I, I, I think that, I think when
you think about it within the context of general perception
than they did overshoot. But when you think about it in
terms of the letter of the law, it's it's a good fit.
Yeah, so, cuz I, I mean, I agreethat generally when we see
(30:45):
there's a reason why I think even the defense use the term
like a public lynching and like the implementation, like the,
the charges of the man act. They actually pointed out that
there's a history of going afterblack men because anytime a
black man is on trial for sex, there's always an ulterior
motive. There's always some sort of, you
know, disgusting recycling of those racist tropes from the
(31:14):
from the Klan era and and modernday lynching comes to mind for a
lot of black celebrities who have been on trial, even if they
are guilty of crimes, but the way that they can still be
framed up or pigeon holes, you know?
Yeah. And I think everything you're
mentioning there made it even more surprising that the verdict
(31:36):
was what it was because as you're saying, minorities have
historically been prosecuted using these laws to.
So to see him get off was reallysurprising to me.
I'm actually interested in whether or not we're seeing in
2025 these two scandals, major sex scandals with these circles,
right? So we have the PDD stuff and
(31:57):
Epstein under the Trump administration.
What? Is there any relationship or
overlap between the two? So from everything I've seen
there don't really have a relationship with each other.
I think that their names come upin conversation together often
because they're both accused of similar types of crimes.
One of the things that I did seethat I think is interesting is
there's been talk of Trump pardoning P Diddy.
(32:21):
Yes, I have seen that. As.
A fellow sex offender. Yeah, and, and Trump was
explicitly asked about it at onepoint and he would not rule it
out. And he said, you know, something
to the fact that he's going to quote certainly look at the
facts and make a decision, you know, whether to go on a
(32:42):
pardoning spree, continuous pardoning spree with P Diddy or
not. So that's that's one connection.
I mean, one of the things that'sinteresting about this is this
trial began in 2025 and ended in2025, rather rather quick trial
and all under the Trump era of intense hostility to immigrants
(33:07):
and intense increase in racism in general against everybody
who's not white. So yeah, like you said, I think
Trump is an important part of this conversation.
There's a lot of anti immigrant sentiment right now.
And like I said before, there's always a correlation between
interest and rhetoric around sextrafficking and rise of
(33:29):
immigration. And that kind of gets us into
why this storyline persists, whythis panic exists, and who is
benefiting from this sensationalism.
And I think there's 2 answers tothis.
I think 1 is, like I said, this is really tied to immigration.
These laws help protect borders.They allow prosecution and
deportations. And this is a tool, this is for
(33:51):
politicians to use. It's also a tool for them to use
the virtue signal to say to their communities that they care
about the children. And the second reason that these
storylines persist and that the sensationalism is benefit, the
second party of people to whom the sensationalism is beneficial
are Ng OS. Ng OS that advocate for victims
(34:13):
of sex trafficking are obviouslyalways looking to raise funds
and collect money for their organizations.
And they know by going to the public and saying, hey, we're
supporting vulnerable women, they're not going to raise as
much money as if they go to the public and say, hey, we're
working to end modern day slavery.
And because one way kind of works on the psychology of
(34:33):
people, that works on our saviorcomplex.
You know, we don't want to help support somebody.
We want to save somebody. So it really allows us to feel
like heroes in a way. So NGOs work really hard to keep
the storyline heightened and sensationalized because it
garners more funds for them. And it's the NGOs that are
collecting the statistics. Yes, the NGOs are collecting the
(34:56):
assistance. The statistics that our
government uses is collected by advocacy groups and NGOs.
Except it seems like in this case there's also the opposite
happening, which is using like this very broad and ambiguous
and charged at the same time accusation of sex trafficking
and racketeering, conspiracy to go after P Diddy.
(35:18):
When really what you're you're talking about is how do you
prosecute abusive and coercive relationships?
Yeah. And so much of how we prosecute
them or how this, so much of thesuccess or failure of those
trials are based on people's perception of abuse, are based
on people's perceptions of abusive relationships.
And there's just a lot of misunderstanding and
(35:40):
misinformation about that. And by having sensationalized
pictures of how abuse works, it supports and scaffolds those
misunderstandings. And I think that had a really
big impact in how people saw Cassie as unworthy of sympathy,
how people didn't see P Diddy asthe cartoonish monster that's
being portrayed. So yeah, I think that has an
(36:01):
unintended consequence in in ourperception around sex abuse.
And one last thing on that, withthe current climate being
increasingly anti immigrant and racist, it's also increasingly
misogynist, an anti woman. And I wonder if that played a
role in sort of painting Cassie in a very unfavorable light
(36:23):
today. Just like that Johnny Depp
trial. Yeah, for sure.
And I think that when we have this kind of moral panic, we
have like a return to traditional values.
And for us that is largely misogynistic.
And we saw that in the rhetoric online where people are blaming
Cassie for being sexually loose and a lot of moralistic hysteria
(36:47):
that speaks more to our emotion,more to our emotions and our
kind of patriarchal understanding of things.
So one of the conclusions I think we can all make out of
this case is that these laws don't really exist to protect
minors, children, women from abuse and coercion.
They're really about immigration, racism and social
(37:10):
control. Exactly, Ezra.
So once again, all about racism.Surprise, surprise.
Welcome to America. America.
Yeah, yeah. I don't think we can do an
entire episode on the P Diddy trial and not talk about baby
oil. I know it's, it's, it's a real,
(37:32):
it's a real injustice. So if you guys want to know how
much baby oil was being used, Cassie said that Diddy liked his
people shiny while they had sex and that every 10 minutes or so
they would reapply baby oil and each freak off, they would go
through about one gallon of babyoil.
(37:52):
And they were doing these thingsin hotels.
So they were like routinely destroying hotel rooms and
having to pay 10s of thousands of dollars for cleanup.
Like this whole thing is just socrazy.
Wouldn't you hate to have to clean up a hotel after a freak
out? But we don't love anybody who
(38:13):
doesn't love us. Thanks for listening to Unwashed
and Unruly, where we scrub the lies out of politics, culture
and history. Join us next time for straight
talk and spitballing. For questions, pitches and
complaints, reach us at unwashedunruly@gmail.com.
It's time for you and me to stand up for ourselves.
Hello everyone and welcome to Unwashed and Unruly.
This is straight talk from the unwashed masses because reality
is worse than a conspiracy. Today we're talking about Sean
Combs and sex. It's a story about race, anti
woman bias, moral panic, justicesystem, and the history of sex
trafficking laws. I'm your host, Lola Michaels
(00:30):
with bona fide candyman Ezra Saeed.
Hi, everybody. And pop culture deep analyst Cam
Cruise. Hey, hey, what's up, everybody?
You can reach us at unwashedunruly@gmail.com.
So just to get started, the PDD verdict, we're looking at a case
of celebrity race, systemic misogyny, and how that insulates
powerful men from very harsh consequences.
(00:53):
I listened to some of this case.I knew it had credible
allegations of just very disturbing evidence of abusive
and violent behavior. There were a lot of witnesses,
but then prosecutors had troublearguing how toxic abuse in a
long term relationship legally constituted sex trafficking.
So basically the jury had to believe that P Diddy coerced his
partners Cassie and Jane Doe through force and fraud as
(01:14):
criminal exploitation and that it wasn't just a swinger
lifestyle. So what what is about this sex
trafficking story in the P Diddytrial Cam that you got
interested in What what motivated you to talk about it
today? All right, thank you, Lola.
Thank you for that beautiful, beautiful summary.
So the reason I got into it is actually just because I really
(01:35):
like celebrity gossip. So I love celebrity gossip.
There's a lot of murmurs in the industry that P Diddy was
abusive, that he was a predator.And I was like excited to see
that he was finally going to getcaught.
So when the when the trial started and I saw the charges of
sex trafficking, I was actually very surprised because although
(01:56):
I do think that P Diddy is an abusive maniac, I didn't think
he was running a prostitution ring or was involved in a
criminal sex network. So I was just confused by the
charges. And as I listened to the case, I
wanted to learn more about the charges, what the law of sex
trafficking was, and how it fit the case.
So before we get into like the details of the sex trafficking
(02:19):
question and whether or not you actually think he's guilty or
why, can you give some background on the details of the
case? Yeah, sure.
And this is, there's a lot of really, really sensitive stuff
here. And yeah, it's, it's really sad.
There's a lot of horrible details.
So if you're sensitive to this kind of stuff, just kind of get
ready. So I'm going to just go over the
(02:41):
details of the case. I want to give a shout out to
Rotten Mango. That's the podcast that I
listened to, to learn it, learn about this stuff.
The people who made the podcast actually went into the court
every day and created episodes that summarize the testimony of
each day. So it was about like 8 hours of
content. So I feel like they really did
give a really good, accurate picture of what was happening
(03:03):
and what was being said in the courtroom.
So here are the allegations thatDiddy was being accused of.
So the main person who was bringing him up on these charges
is a woman named Cassie. Cassie was somebody who dated
Diddy, I think maybe 10 years ago.
So Diddy started dating Cassie when she was in her early 20s,
and Cassie was an aspiring musician.
(03:25):
So she met Diddy and she, you know, saw an opportunity to
further her music career. But she also really expressed
that they did have a connection.It wasn't about only furthering
her career. She really did like him and love
him. And so they started a
relationship. And after some time in that
relationship, Diddy opened up toher about some of his sexual
(03:46):
proclivities, asking her if she wanted to participate in parties
with other escorts where she would have sex with other men.
And she kind of reluctantly agreed to these things.
She was in love with him, she said, and these were his
fantasies, and she didn't want to shame him about those things
or make him feel bad about them.So she kind of willingly
participated. According to her, she willingly
(04:09):
participated in the first one, and she felt uncomfortable about
it. She didn't really like it.
P Diddy was super, super excitedabout it.
He loved it. It was the greatest thing and it
made him happy. It was an abusive relationship.
Cassie was very concerned about keeping P Diddy happy and a lot
of her behavior and actions centered around not upsetting
him because when he was upset, he was abusive.
(04:31):
So she started engaging in this activity and she felt pressured
too. She felt like she couldn't say
no to this activity when he brought it up and it became
something that they did once a week.
And the details of the freak offs are pretty wild, too.
So Cassie says that she would use drugs, usually ecstasy, to
(04:51):
engage in this activity and thatthese parties would last
anywhere from 36 to 48 hours. And they would hire a handful of
escorts. So they would have like, men
come in, maybe four or five men.The man would have sex with
Cassie while P Diddy watched in the corner and pleasured
himself. After the man finished, then
(05:11):
they would go into another room.So that would happen with the
escorts on rotation. So she would do that with one
escort and then the next escort would start in a few in a little
while and then the next escort in this would go on and on.
And Cassie said that this happened so frequently that she
would start having urinary tractinfections and then she wouldn't
heal from the urinary tract infection and then she would
(05:32):
have to have another freak off. Oh, yeah, I don't know if I
mentioned that these parties were called freak offs.
So she would have another freak off and she would be having to
give oral to people. And when she had sores in her
mouth, Diddy would ask people tourinate on her.
And it was a wholly unpleasant experience for her.
She really, really hated it. Being drugged the entire time is
(05:53):
the only way that she can cope with it.
And she felt pressured to participate in this activity
because she knew it's what Diddywanted.
He would become violent when he didn't get what he wanted.
And he also kind of strung her along.
So she was always kind of waiting for him to release her
records or to help her make thatbreak.
So he definitely used manipulation around her desire
to become a part of the music industry as a way to coerce her
(06:16):
into engaging in this activity. How does this case that you just
described, like how does it fit the charges of sex trafficking?
Like how does that make sense? Yeah.
So that's something that I learned about this.
I had a really different impression of what sex
trafficking was going into this case.
So if I can just stop and ask you guys like what do you think
sex trafficking? What comes to mind when you hear
the term sex trafficking? When I think of it, I think of
(06:39):
what used to be called white slavery, which conjures up
images of women being kidnapped and forced into or coerced into
forced prostitution. Yeah, so there's there was
always a moral panic around it in some way and it was always
tinged with race and immigrationfrom what I know about it.
(07:01):
Yeah, totally. And I and I love that you use,
not that I love kidnapping, don't get me wrong, Ezra, but I
love that you use the word kidnapping because that felt
like a really essential part of what sex trafficking was to me.
But as I learned, the word of the law of sex trafficking is
really different from what my impression was.
So here is the law that applied to the Diddy case.
(07:22):
So this means sex trafficking isdefined as recruiting,
harboring, transporting, providing, or obtaining a person
for the purpose of a commercial sex act through force, fraud, or
coercion. So if we look at the
allegations, they actually do match the definition of sex
trafficking in my opinion. So if we go through some of
(07:44):
those charges specifically, the first part was recruitment and
transportation. And he did recruit women using
his his employees would have to call escorts for him and he
would transport them across state lines, which is
specifically addressed through the Man Act portion of the sex
trafficking law. And he was.
(08:04):
He was found guilty of the Man Act.
He was found guilty of the man Act, yes, and he was found
guilty of prostitution charges, but he was not convicted on sex
trafficking. So yeah, that's why I was just
trying to understand why he wasn't convicting on sex
trafficking and trying to fit figure out exactly how the
charges fit this situation. So we have recruitment and
transportation. I feel like the prosecution did
(08:25):
a really good job of proving those two points.
Coercion, I think is pretty clear.
He used manipulation about her career.
He used the intimidation of violence against her.
He used retaliation against women who had kind of resisted
or try to report him in any way.I think we meet the allegation
(08:47):
of fraud and that he was stringing Cassie along, telling
her that he was going to do certain things for her career
and didn't do those things. So he was misrepresenting that.
And force comes in the in the form of physical violence.
And I think that we can safely say that that's no longer an
allegation because, you know, wehave the the video of P Diddy
attacking Cassie in the hallway.That's something he admits that
(09:10):
happened. So there's not really much
question around the idea of physical force and then
commercial sex act. Clearly, you know, he was paying
for sex. So that fits the charges there
too. OK, so you just proved that he
was guilty of the version of sextrafficking by law.
So why did the jury get it wrong?
Yeah. And I was really, really
(09:31):
surprised when they came up withthe verdict they did because
like I said, I thought they proved it.
But I think that the big, big thing here is there's a really
big, big gap between what peoplethink sex trafficking is and how
it exists in the letter of the law.
So a lot of the news that we seeand a lot of the media that we
see around sex trafficking presents the most extreme
(09:52):
versions of this, the most extreme stories where people are
abducted, people are taking overseas, people are drugged.
So when people hear the word sextrafficking, they're thinking
about shady shadow networks of bad men who are kidnapping
children off the streets. So over time, I think that
builds a very specific picture of what the crime of sex
(10:13):
trafficking looks like, what victimhood looks like and what
perpetration looks like. And I don't think the Diddy case
matched that picture. And I think that kind of clouded
how the jurors saw this case. So you have like the idea that
they're going to go after certain perpetrators and believe
only certain victims. I mean obviously race is a big
(10:34):
factor in this but how does you know anti anti woman bias or
anything like that play a role? Yeah, and that's really, really
important. So the portrait that's creating
by the sensationalism around sextrafficking kind of positions
the victim as this innocent child who is completely has no
autonomy over their situation and is completely powerless, and
(10:56):
the person who's perpetrating these crimes as this, like,
cartoonishly villainous bad guy.And like I said, the case
doesn't really match that. So the first thing I want to
talk about is the idea of perfect victim.
So we first see the term ideal victim in 1986, and it's a term
that's coined by our Norwegian sociologist Nils Christie and
(11:18):
explores how certain crime victims are perceived as more
deserving of empathy and supportin public discourse.
And if I could just continue to read from this definition, this
idealized figure is often portrayed as weak, vulnerable,
and innocent with no responsibility for their
victimization. They are typically engaged in
virtuous activities at the time of the crime and are isolated
(11:38):
from the perpetrator. So like I was saying about the
portrait that's created and the sensationalized media that we
see about sex trafficking, the victim is an innocent child.
They're completely weak. When Cassie met Diddy, she was
not a minor. They were having a consensual
relationship, and she's also black.
So when you match this picture versus the picture of victimhood
(11:58):
that we see in the media, we already see there's some nuance
here and some complications. And it gives space for the
defense to kind of paint Cassie in in a light where maybe she's
not completely blameless in thisscenario.
So I think this issue in the theroles of perpetrator and victim
are clouded here in a few ways. I think the fact that Diddy is
(12:20):
powerful and connected also changes the equation a bit.
And I think the defense capitalized on that dynamic in
that they tried to frame Cassie as a gold digger, somebody who
was really sought fame and moneyover everything else.
And also I think there's a attitude that exists in the
(12:41):
general public that there is a price for fame, that if you're
involved in entertainment, in entertainment industry as a
woman, that there that you should just expect to have to be
sexually exploited or you shouldexpect certain favors as a price
of admission. So I think all of these things
colored people's opinions towards Cassie, and Cassie
wasn't really able to garner thesympathy as the victim.
(13:02):
That's interesting. So what has been the reaction to
the verdict on social media? Social media I, I think is so
interesting and such a wonderfultool in in situations like this
because you can really see a window into what the general
opinion is. And I think that you can totally
see that people did not perceiveCassie as a victim through the
comments on social media. I gathered a bunch of comments
(13:25):
here that show that Cassie failed to gain sympathy and that
people saw her as partially responsible or didn't think of
her as a victim. So if I could read some of those
comments here. The first one says Cassie's
husband has got to be re evaluating his life choices.
Cassie out here making us believe she's innocent.
Cassie ruined her image for 20 mil.
(13:47):
Why are they even saying Cassie's husband like they don't
know who he is? Yeah.
And I think that is there's so much misogyny also in these in
these comments where that because Cassie was involved in
quote UN quote promiscuous activities that her husband
should be ashamed for that. And that's pretty, pretty awful.
(14:10):
The next comment, she is not a victim.
Cassie loved it. Cassie's husband is the real
victim in all of this. I do not wish this even on my
worst enemy. So yeah, you can clearly see,
and I didn't really check the cherry pick these comments.
It's not like I looked through and I tried to pick the worst
ones. This represents the general
sentiment. Everybody kind of sees Cassie as
(14:32):
willing that she was hungry for fame and that she stayed in a
bad situation and that she couldhave left at any time.
And I think that's one of like the, I think that's one of the
areas that the defense really did some great manipulation.
They really worked hard to try to keep any experts out of the
courtroom that could testify on the dynamics of abusive
(14:52):
relationships. They worked really hard to get
off any get any jurors out who had experienced domestic
violence. So kind of maintaining this
facade about what abuse and sex abuse looks like was essential
to their framing of the case. Going back to just the sex
trafficking question and like how it ties in, how has the
(15:13):
legal definition of sex trafficking been applied in the
US? Like what are and, and what are
we looking at? Like is this a real thing?
Is the public perception of it versus the way the law describes
it? What are the actual statistics?
So one of the things that makes this issue really interesting is
that it's very hard to nail downwhat is actually happening.
(15:33):
So here is a statistic that comes from the University of
Texas. According to the University of
Texas, 7079 thousand minors are currently being trafficked in
Texas alone. So we're talking about 80,000
kids. That does not include the
adults. So a huge, huge number and
that's kind of reiterated by theInstitute of the Institute
(15:55):
Against Human Trafficking. According to the Institute
Against Human Trafficking quote,there are hundreds of thousands
and potentially over 1,000,000 victims trapped in the world of
sex trafficking in the United States.
Because of the hidden nature of the crime, it is essentially
impossible to know how many for sure.
So this is a really, really bizarre statistic because the
(16:15):
first part of it is saying there's hundreds of thousands,
maybe millions of people. And then the second part of it
is saying. We don't really don't.
Actually know. So it's very strange, like it
doesn't really make sense. And the fact that there's a
bunch of insubstantiated claims out there is further evidenced
by this quote over here. The National Center for Missing
and Exploited Children had a quote in 2015 saying one in
(16:40):
seven runaways are victims of sex trafficking, and they're
talking about teens here. So the Washington Post
investigated that claim, and they found there was no evidence
at all. In response to that
investigation, they changed the quote to say one in seven
runaways are likely victims of trafficking.
And where that number comes fromis a complete mystery.
Well, yeah. I was going to actually ask you
(17:01):
about that because you have you read all these statistics and
these numbers and how do they get these numbers?
Like are, is there any reality to it?
Is is it based on anything? It's, it's really interesting
because there are all these claims about the prevalence of
sex trafficking, how it's everywhere and how difficult it
is to collect data around it. And I do sympathize with that.
(17:23):
But the ways they use now, I feel like clearly are creating
false positives. So one really good example of
that is the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children
has a hotline you can call to report your missing kid.
So the way this works is when the operator receives that call,
if they get any inkling that sextrafficking is involved, that
child will be marked as a sex trafficking victim.
(17:44):
So. That means it's just subjective.
Well, there is a list of warningsigns.
Would you like like to hear Shared Hope International's list
of warning signs for teenagers? Absolutely.
Get ready for this. This is some really extreme
behavior in teenagers. The first one is unexplained
absences from class. That means you're being sex.
(18:04):
Trafficked. Yeah, exactly.
So apparently we probably all were likely victims of sex
trafficking. My entire junior high school
year. Yes, overly tired in class, less
appropriately dressed than before, which we also know is
just the part of kind of maturing.
Like your dress changes sexualized behavior.
Again, a normal part of development.
(18:26):
Withdrawn, depressed, distractedor checked out.
Brags about making or having lots of money.
It's weird because a lot of those things when you were first
reading them sounded like biasedagainst low income and poor
families because a lot of kids, they're going to school and they
have a lot of distraction at home.
(18:47):
They come from really difficult economic situations.
You know, they don't have enoughto eat.
That's going to affect like how their attention levels are, how
distracted they are, their clothing.
Like all of those things just seem like, well, then who are
who's going to be accused of this exactly?
Exactly. And those are like the people
(19:09):
who come up the most in the system are foster care kids.
And if I can talk more about howthe hotline works, it's actually
pretty alarming. So like I said, if the operator
gets any inkling that you're being sex trafficked, if there's
any warning sign, quote UN quotewarning sign of sex trafficking,
you're marked as a sex trafficking victim.
And also the way that it's tallied is really interesting
because if I have a daughter andshe runs away and I say, oh, she
(19:32):
has an older boyfriend, then she'll be marked as a victim of
sex trafficking. She can come back in 2 hours and
she'll still be considered. She'll still be on that list, so
she's still contributing to the data.
They don't delete it. They don't delete it.
And you can also be counted multiple times.
So if that same person runs awaythe next month, then they'll be
counted again. So there's a lot of instances,
(19:53):
like you were saying, of vulnerable children, kids who
are in foster care situations running away. 6 * a year.
That is counted as six victims of sex trafficking.
So the definition is incredibly broad and and problematic.
Yes. And the way that we collect data
is creating a lot of false positives.
I realized that it is hard to create data around this stuff.
(20:14):
So it's like it's, it's a difficult task, but the way that
we're doing it now really doesn't make any sense.
So it's, I mean, like, to me it sounds like it's going to, it's
a very convenient way of creating a moral panic around
this stuff. Because anytime of there's like
a sexual panic in the US, there's always like another
agenda that's going on. You know, it's some sort of
(20:36):
campaign to implement some sort of like social control or
manipulate people. So like what?
How does this fit into? You're exactly right.
This fits the perfect definitionof a moral panic, because a
moral panic is all about an exaggerated fear about a
perceived threat that may not actually exist.
And when we look at the data, that's exactly what we see.
So in 2017, Homeland Security reported 500 cases of sex
(20:59):
trafficking. And at the same time, NGOs are
reporting ranges from the hundreds of thousands to
1,000,000. So we see a huge discrepancy in
this data and that's where we see that this is not based on
statistics. This is based on people's
emotions. This is reflecting people's
anxiety. And like also this propels
(21:20):
people to feel like that this isa large and unaddressed problem,
that there is a notion that we're insufficiently concerned
about this problem and that thiscrime is happening under our
nose and that police are not doing enough about it.
So this is where we really see this like knee jerk feeling and
how this is starting to be defined as a panic.
And then you have whenever there's other police aren't
(21:42):
doing enough, then there's a justification for the police
cracking down and cracking down more widely.
And that leads to all sorts of. Exactly.
Exactly. And then you have, so I was
thinking about the all the scareand panic like in the 80s and
90s about, you know, that children being kidnapped, about
(22:04):
satanic ritual abuse in preschools.
You know, all of that, which wasa kind of social reaction to
women actually going to work andnot being responsible for
entirely responsible for a childcare at home and a way of
showing that there was a real threat by women breaking from
(22:27):
some sort of domestic like family model or mold or
whatever. Yeah, there's always a campaign
to Save the Children. I think that's something that
existed in the form of Satanic Panic in the 1980s.
It existed in the form of Stranger Danger in the 1990s.
So this panic is not wholly new.It just has a new name.
(22:48):
So this is our version of Stranger Danger for the 2000s.
So like why now though? Like what's the like?
I think in the 80s and 90s we knew why there was a lot of
hysteria about childcare becauseit was an attempt to put women
back into the home and to be theprimary caregivers.
And to say that it was scary to leave your children with daycare
(23:11):
providers because they were inevitably going to perform some
sort of satanic ritual on your child and perform abuse, which
was completely fabricated, of course.
But so there was a, a, a big social context there that was
attempting to put women in theirquote, UN quote place in the
family. Yeah.
So what you're saying is that the this was a manifestation of
(23:34):
anxieties that existed around womanhood and questions around
childcare. And I surprisingly and weirdly
enough, I think this is all panic around immigration.
And it sounds kind of like a stretch, but if we go back and
look at the history of sex trafficking in America, its
roots are in anti immigrant sentiment.
(23:55):
And ultimately these are laws atthe end of the day.
And these are laws that are usedto control movement and to be
able to prosecute people from crossing borders.
Immigration How do sex trafficking laws relate to
immigration? OK, Yeah, All right, so bear
with me. Now, guys, we're going to go
back and we're going to go back to the times when sex
trafficking was first on our minds as people.
(24:17):
And guess what? Surprise, surprise, it's all
about racism. Like most of the laws in America
first start out. So the precursor we see to the
sex trafficking law is somethingcalled the 1870 Act to prevent
the Kidnapping and Importing of Mongolian, Chinese and Japanese
Females for criminal or demoralizing purposes.
That just rolls off the tongue, don't it?
(24:39):
Yep, and you can already see that it's a tool that's being
utilized to control migrant populations.
All right, so then in 1875, there's another act that
includes in its preamble that itwas trying to quote, UN quote,
end the danger of cheap Chinese labor and immoral Chinese women.
(24:59):
And this all, of course, culminates in the Chinese
Exclusion Act of 1882, which prohibited the immigration of
Chinese laborers for 10 years tothe country.
So these laws were being createdto keep Chinese people out and
to control them. So right from the beginning,
these are tools of control. And sex trafficking is a newish
(25:21):
term that's being created to separate it from smuggling.
So smuggling historically has been done for the benefit of the
person who was participating in it.
It was being done at the behest of the person being done it to
it. But trafficking shifts the
criminality from the person who is being smuggled, the person
who's entering a country illegally, to the person doing
(25:42):
the transportation. And as you can see, this is
obviously a much more efficient tool for people who are trying
to prosecute. It's a lot easier to go after
the person who's doing the transporting than it is after to
go after every single person whois here illegally.
So really, right from the beginning, it's a tool that's
used to control migrant populations.
It's weird though, because when you were saying that, I was
thinking about going back to thePDD, that it fits into the
(26:06):
imperfect victim definition because it's like if they're
going to say sex trafficking, but then you have a willing,
quote UN quote willing victim intheir mind, the how they
presented Cassie and and and Jane, then they would be, it
would fall more into like the smuggling definition or would
(26:26):
fall more into like, oh, they voluntarily chose this
relationship. They chose this lifestyle.
It was a swinging lifestyle. And so how can you charge he
did? How can he be the perpetrator of
sex trafficking? Because he wasn't running it as
an enterprise with coercion. Yeah.
And like the we can also question the use of force here
because Cassie was making a choice on some level.
So it really is murky when you think about it in those terms
(26:49):
for sure. So yeah, you're absolutely
right. And then so.
Does that mean So what you were saying about immigration?
So I assume that means like the definition of sex trafficking by
law has changed over the years depending on what the ruling
class really wants to implement,like what who they, which
immigrants are when they need the cheap labor, when they need
(27:11):
someone to come, a population tocome in to perform, like when
there's when they need that hysteria or social control,
obviously the economy. So we're seeing a lot of this
happened today in terms of immigration.
So how did the law change? So one of the interesting things
is the law always reflects the current anxiety of the times.
And I think that's one of the reasons you can really say this
(27:32):
is a moral panic. So the first time or one of the
first times that the term trafficking is used, the actual
term is in the 19 O 4 International Agreement for the
Suppression of White Slight Slave Trafficking.
So that was the idea that that the the problem was that
basically to undermine the deep seated black slavery as being a
(27:54):
foundation of this country and to say that actually like white
slaves where that was the main issue.
They're the victims of awful black people.
The dark skinned riffraff that are invading the country.
Yeah, exactly. So at this time or in this law,
trafficking is defined this way,cross-border movement of white
(28:14):
women and girls by force to seekor drugs for the purpose of
commercial sexual exploitation. So it is specifically for white
women. It is written in the law.
So I'm not speculating about this being a race based law.
It's literally. It's in the, it's in there.
Yeah. And it also, this is how it
defines A victim. A victim is a white woman who is
(28:34):
a victim of the animal lust of the dark racist.
So this is in 1904. This Oh yeah, this leads to the
man Act in 1910. But as you guys know, this is
when slavery has ended. So now interracial relationships
are on the rise and these laws are created around the fear
around that. So they take, yeah, so they take
(28:56):
completely consensual relations and criminal relationship
between black men and white women.
And they need to put black men in their place, quote UN quote,
and uphold the quote, UN quote sanctity of white womanhood.
And so they can say, well, you're trafficking when really
these are just consensual relationships and they're
traveling across state lines. Yep, Yep, And it's a way it's
(29:17):
like a physical, it's like a a legal manifestation of an
anxiety that's kind of existing at the time.
And it's funny that are not funny.
But you're totally right when you touch on the purity of of
white women is if we look at theMan Act of 1910, which is the
culmination of all these other smaller acts.
The Man Act sought to maintain the moral the moral purity of
(29:37):
white women by prohibiting womenfrom crossing state lines for
immoral purposes and criminalizing interracial
couples. In terms of the PDD case, it's
itself I, I think you're by all indications, I think you're
right that he is guilty of obscene abuse of Cassie.
I also think he's wealthy, he's powerful, he's black and that
(30:01):
and he's weird if if nothing else.
And those are ingredients that alot of powerful people in the US
don't like in in a black man. I think he made he, he sort of
became an easy target. And it sounds like from what
you're saying, they kind of overshot by going for the sex
(30:24):
trafficking conviction? As I don't I don't think she's
saying that I feel like. I, I, I think that, I think when
you think about it within the context of general perception
than they did overshoot. But when you think about it in
terms of the letter of the law, it's it's a good fit.
Yeah, so, cuz I, I mean, I agreethat generally when we see
(30:45):
there's a reason why I think even the defense use the term
like a public lynching and like the implementation, like the,
the charges of the man act. They actually pointed out that
there's a history of going afterblack men because anytime a
black man is on trial for sex, there's always an ulterior
motive. There's always some sort of, you
know, disgusting recycling of those racist tropes from the
(31:14):
from the Klan era and and modernday lynching comes to mind for a
lot of black celebrities who have been on trial, even if they
are guilty of crimes, but the way that they can still be
framed up or pigeon holes, you know?
Yeah. And I think everything you're
mentioning there made it even more surprising that the verdict
(31:36):
was what it was because as you're saying, minorities have
historically been prosecuted using these laws to.
So to see him get off was reallysurprising to me.
I'm actually interested in whether or not we're seeing in
2025 these two scandals, major sex scandals with these circles,
right? So we have the PDD stuff and
(31:57):
Epstein under the Trump administration.
What? Is there any relationship or
overlap between the two? So from everything I've seen
there don't really have a relationship with each other.
I think that their names come upin conversation together often
because they're both accused of similar types of crimes.
One of the things that I did seethat I think is interesting is
there's been talk of Trump pardoning P Diddy.
(32:21):
Yes, I have seen that. As.
A fellow sex offender. Yeah, and, and Trump was
explicitly asked about it at onepoint and he would not rule it
out. And he said, you know, something
to the fact that he's going to quote certainly look at the
facts and make a decision, you know, whether to go on a
(32:42):
pardoning spree, continuous pardoning spree with P Diddy or
not. So that's that's one connection.
I mean, one of the things that'sinteresting about this is this
trial began in 2025 and ended in2025, rather rather quick trial
and all under the Trump era of intense hostility to immigrants
(33:07):
and intense increase in racism in general against everybody
who's not white. So yeah, like you said, I think
Trump is an important part of this conversation.
There's a lot of anti immigrant sentiment right now.
And like I said before, there's always a correlation between
interest and rhetoric around sextrafficking and rise of
(33:29):
immigration. And that kind of gets us into
why this storyline persists, whythis panic exists, and who is
benefiting from this sensationalism.
And I think there's 2 answers tothis.
I think 1 is, like I said, this is really tied to immigration.
These laws help protect borders.They allow prosecution and
deportations. And this is a tool, this is for
(33:51):
politicians to use. It's also a tool for them to use
the virtue signal to say to their communities that they care
about the children. And the second reason that these
storylines persist and that the sensationalism is benefit, the
second party of people to whom the sensationalism is beneficial
are Ng OS. Ng OS that advocate for victims
(34:13):
of sex trafficking are obviouslyalways looking to raise funds
and collect money for their organizations.
And they know by going to the public and saying, hey, we're
supporting vulnerable women, they're not going to raise as
much money as if they go to the public and say, hey, we're
working to end modern day slavery.
And because one way kind of works on the psychology of
(34:33):
people, that works on our saviorcomplex.
You know, we don't want to help support somebody.
We want to save somebody. So it really allows us to feel
like heroes in a way. So NGOs work really hard to keep
the storyline heightened and sensationalized because it
garners more funds for them. And it's the NGOs that are
collecting the statistics. Yes, the NGOs are collecting the
(34:56):
assistance. The statistics that our
government uses is collected by advocacy groups and NGOs.
Except it seems like in this case there's also the opposite
happening, which is using like this very broad and ambiguous
and charged at the same time accusation of sex trafficking
and racketeering, conspiracy to go after P Diddy.
(35:18):
When really what you're you're talking about is how do you
prosecute abusive and coercive relationships?
Yeah. And so much of how we prosecute
them or how this, so much of thesuccess or failure of those
trials are based on people's perception of abuse, are based
on people's perceptions of abusive relationships.
And there's just a lot of misunderstanding and
(35:40):
misinformation about that. And by having sensationalized
pictures of how abuse works, it supports and scaffolds those
misunderstandings. And I think that had a really
big impact in how people saw Cassie as unworthy of sympathy,
how people didn't see P Diddy asthe cartoonish monster that's
being portrayed. So yeah, I think that has an
(36:01):
unintended consequence in in ourperception around sex abuse.
And one last thing on that, withthe current climate being
increasingly anti immigrant and racist, it's also increasingly
misogynist, an anti woman. And I wonder if that played a
role in sort of painting Cassie in a very unfavorable light
(36:23):
today. Just like that Johnny Depp
trial. Yeah, for sure.
And I think that when we have this kind of moral panic, we
have like a return to traditional values.
And for us that is largely misogynistic.
And we saw that in the rhetoric online where people are blaming
Cassie for being sexually loose and a lot of moralistic hysteria
(36:47):
that speaks more to our emotion,more to our emotions and our
kind of patriarchal understanding of things.
So one of the conclusions I think we can all make out of
this case is that these laws don't really exist to protect
minors, children, women from abuse and coercion.
They're really about immigration, racism and social
(37:10):
control. Exactly, Ezra.
So once again, all about racism.Surprise, surprise.
Welcome to America. America.
Yeah, yeah. I don't think we can do an
entire episode on the P Diddy trial and not talk about baby
oil. I know it's, it's, it's a real,
(37:32):
it's a real injustice. So if you guys want to know how
much baby oil was being used, Cassie said that Diddy liked his
people shiny while they had sex and that every 10 minutes or so
they would reapply baby oil and each freak off, they would go
through about one gallon of babyoil.
(37:52):
And they were doing these thingsin hotels.
So they were like routinely destroying hotel rooms and
having to pay 10s of thousands of dollars for cleanup.
Like this whole thing is just socrazy.
Wouldn't you hate to have to clean up a hotel after a freak
out? But we don't love anybody who
(38:13):
doesn't love us. Thanks for listening to Unwashed
and Unruly, where we scrub the lies out of politics, culture
and history. Join us next time for straight
talk and spitballing. For questions, pitches and
complaints, reach us at unwashedunruly@gmail.com.
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