Diplo Accused of Distributing Revenge Porn: Report
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A police report with the Los Angeles Police Department was filed against Diplo in August by a woman accusing him of distributing nude photographs of her without her consent, Pitchfork reports. According to the outlet, the LAPD submitted her case to the Los Angeles city attorney’s office in November, and it is under review.
The woman, identified as Shelly Auguste, has been entangled in a legal battle with the artist since 2020. She previously claimed Diplo (real name Thomas Wesley Pentz) recorded and distributed sexually explicit videos of her without her permission, and knowingly gave her with a sexually transmitted infection.
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In her new case, Auguste is suing the mega producer for sexual battery, gender violence, intentional intrusion into private affairs, battery, assault, defamation, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and fraud, as well as violation of the Ralph Civil Rights Act and violation of the Tom Bane Civil Rights Act. A civil trial is currently scheduled for April 2024.
An attorney for Diplo did not immediately respond to Rolling Stone’s request for comment on Wednesday, but his lawyer, Bryan J. Freedman, told Pitchfork that “[f]or more than three years, Shelly Auguste has been orchestrating an ongoing smear campaign against Wes — and this is just more of the same.” Freedman added, “Now, Ms. Auguste is at it yet again. But Wes will defend himself, and, just as he has done every time Ms. Auguste has defamed, harassed and attacked him and his family, he will win.”
Auguste filed for a restraining order against Diplo in 2020 accusing him of distributing “revenge porn” images of her to allegedly “humiliate her and to scare other women out of coming forward.” In October that year, she claimed Diplo had hired a private investigator after the two had an argument. “The private investigator stated to me that he knew my address, he knew my parents address, he knew my place of work as well as my parents place to work,” she alleged in a Twitter thread. “Take that as you may but most people will take that as a threat.”
Diplo denied her initial allegations in an Instagram post in October 2021. “She was an obsessed fan of mine, and after I relinquished all contact with her, it appears that her only purpose in life has been to disrupt my work, my business, harass me and my close friends and attack me and threaten my family,” he wrote at the time.
In January 2021, Diplo and Auguste signed a dual restraining order agreement to not to disparage each other, according to Pitchfork. Both have since filed competing lawsuits: Diplo accused Auguste of stalking, trespassing, and distributing private materials in April 2021; Auguste alleged sexual battery, gender violence, and more against the producer in a suit filed in June 2021.
Another woman filed a lawsuit against Diplo in July 2021, claiming that at the afterparty, he invited her to his room and said she could not leave without performing sexual acts on him. She alleged that after concluding she had no way to escape, she acquiesced to the artist’s alleged demands. She also alleged that Diplo may have filmed the incident without her consent. A week later, she withdrew the suit.
Auguste was granted a new temporary restraining order against Diplo on Sept. 18, and in October, a judge extended Auguste’s temporary restraining order until December 2023, per Pitchfork.
“I think it’s time the music industry stops enabling the perpetual abuse that occurs,” Auguste said in a statement to Rolling Stone. “I have been silenced for far too long. I hope that with this restraining order I can finally gain peace and protection. I hope that with the criminal investigation, the justice system gets it right this time.”
Although Diplo requested his own temporary restraining order on Aug. 24, his bid was denied, with the Superior Court of California stating in its decision that “[t]here are insufficient articulable facts of harassment pled in this Petition to warrant the Court’s issuance of emergency temporary orders.”
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