John Legend’s Longtime Manager Recalls ‘Terrifying Situation’ at Diddy Party

John Legend’s longtime manager is recalling a “terrifying situation” she found herself in at a party thrown by Sean “Diddy” Combs nearly three decades ago. Ty Stiklorius, who has been Legend’s manager for 20 years, opened up in a New York Times piece about her experience in the “toxic” music industry, writing that she’s hopeful for new beginnings following the accusations of misconduct against Combs.

Stiklorius recalled her own experience at a New Year’s Eve yacht party thrown by Combs in St. Barts 27 years ago when she was a recent college graduate. Attending the party with her brother, Stiklorius said she was “directed into a bedroom by a man” and that she’s still “not sure of who he was or if he had any connection” to 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,” Stiklorius, 49, wrote, adding that she assumed at the time that her “experience was an anomaly” and that it was “just one guy behaving badly at a drunken party.”

But now, she knows it wasn’t unusual.

“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 wrote.

She said she almost “gave up” on the music industry after her “early experiences with predators, and those that enabled them.” But Legend helped change her mind. “It turns out that many artists, including John, want to be a part of a different model of business and culture,” she wrote.

“How many other women had early experiences similar to mine and abandoned their ambition to be artists — let alone recording engineers, producers or executives?” Stiklorius questioned. “How many women were coerced, abused, assaulted and silenced on their way to their dreams — trapped by men who controlled access and who made us believe that the key to the kingdom was a key card to their hotel room?”

She says she’s hopeful the industry can now “turn the page on a culture of exploitation and abuse.”