Sean Combs and the Limits of the ‘Family Man’ Defense

On Monday, Sean Combs was arrested in Manhattan on racketeering and sex trafficking charges. If he’s convicted of the racketeering charge, it could potentially land him a life sentence. His legal team defended him that day with references to his role as a father. “Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs is a music icon, self-made entrepreneur, loving family man and proven philanthropist who has spent the last 30 years building an empire, adoring his children and working to uplift the Black community,” they said in a statement. “He is an imperfect person, but he is not a criminal.”

Combs has pleaded not guilty to these charges. Last year, after being accused of sexual assault in four separate lawsuits, Combs defended himself in part by invoking his family: “Let me be absolutely clear: I did not do any of the awful things being alleged. I will fight for my name, my family and for the truth.”

The latest charges are vile, describing years of sexual and physical abuse, enabled by Combs’s vast fortune and the pull of his celebrity. The government outlines the way Combs and his staff allegedly used their power to “intimidate, threaten and lure female victims into Combs’s orbit, often under the pretense of a romantic relationship. Combs then used force, threats of force and coercion to cause victims to engage in extended sex acts with male commercial sex workers.”

Combs was denied bail on Tuesday. His lawyers tried to appeal the decision with a letter to the judge. In this missive, Combs’s lawyers paint “victim 1” as simply a jilted, lonely lover. “That one person was an adult woman who lived alone, who never lived with Sean Combs. She had her own friends, she had her own life, as adults tend to do. Mr. Combs and this person were very much in love for a long time,” the letter states. “This one person often expressed anger and jealousy because Mr. Combs had another girlfriend, as will be testified to by many witnesses and as the written communications show.”

Despite the fact that the world has seen video evidence of Combs assaulting his ex-girlfriend, his lawyers seem to believe that pitting Combs, a “loving family man,” against an “adult woman who lived alone” would be an effective defense.

They’re trying it because, to some extent, we still assign a positive moral value to getting married and having children. It’s why Republicans keep using Kamala Harris’s lack of biological children to attack her character. Combs’s lawyers are also likely playing on built in prejudices against Black women in particular, who have always had a harder time being seen as respectable, aspirational or worthy of protection in the public eye.