John Legend’s longtime manager, Ty Stiklorius, is speaking out about the state of the music industry following Sean “Diddy” Combs’ arrest for sex trafficking.
The 49-year-old CEO of the management company Friends at Work wrote an op-ed for the New York Times published Thursday where she shared her hopes that the industry gets a fresh start amid the controversy involving Combs, 54.
Stiklorius also recalled being in a “terrifying situation” when she attended one of Combs’ New York Eve parties on a yacht in St. Barts 27 years ago.
Ty Stiklorius at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures 4th Annual Gala on October 19. Getty Images for Academy Museum of Motion Pictures
Stiklorius, who was a recent college graduate at the time, claimed that “a man who seemed to be an associate of the party’s host” brought her to a bedroom and then locked the door behind them.
“To this day, I can’t remember how I managed to talk my way out of that terrifying situation,” she wrote. “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.”
Sean “Diddy” Combs at the 2023 MTV Video Music Awards. Getty Images for MTV
The music industry exec said she didn’t know who the man was “or if he had any connection” to Combs, and assumed at the time her “experience was an anomaly” and that it was “just one guy behaving badly at a drunken party.”
But after working in the industry for 20 years, Stiklorius said she’s realized that the incident “was no aberration.”
John Legend and Ty Stiklorius at the T.J. Martell Foundation’s Women of Influence Los Angeles event in May 2015. Getty Images
“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.
Stiklorius went on, “This toxic situation has been allowed to fester because power has been concentrated in the hands of kingmakers: wealthy, entitled, nearly always male gatekeepers who control nearly every door that leads to success and who can, without consequence, use their power to abuse young women and young men. Too often, women have not been safe in recording studios, on tour buses, in green rooms or in offices. It’s not a bug of the music business; it’s a major feature.”
Sean “Diddy” Combs hosting a party in East Hampton, NY in Sept. 2007. Bryan Bedder/CP/Getty Images
Sean “Diddy” Combs and Kim Porter with their twin daughters at his White Party in 2007. Getty Images
However, Stiklorius noted that she thinks the music industry can “turn the page on a culture of exploitation and abuse” now that the “days of gatekeepers” in the business “are numbered.”
“All of this means we have an opportunity to turn the page on an archaic, sometimes predatory model of doing business in which it was all too common to ignore, protect or elevate predators and their enablers,” she said.
Mike Jackson, Ty Stiklorius and John Legend at the 2018 Creative Arts Emmy Awards. Dan Steinberg/Invision/AP
Stiklorius also wrote in her op-ed that she’s “persisted” in the industry since she started working with Legend, 45, in 2005. She said the “All of Me” singer is among the artists who “want to be a part of a different model of business and culture.”
The Post has reached out to Combs’ rep for comment.
John Legend and Ty Stiklorius at the 2019 LACMA Art + Film Gala. Getty Images for LACMA
The music industry is certainly under the microscope in the wake of Combs being arrested and charged with sex trafficking, racketeering and transportation to engage in prostitution. He has pleaded not guilty and is being held at a Brooklyn federal jail.
A sketch of Sean “Diddy” Combs in court in Manhattan on October 10. REUTERS
Prosecutors have accused the disgraced rapper of orchestrating elaborate, drug-laced “Freak Off” sex sessions where he allegedly forced women into sex acts with male prostitutes while he masturbated and secretly filmed.
Combs has also been accused of rape in numerous lawsuits since his arrest. Some of the victims, which include both men and women, were underage at the time of the alleged assaults. The rapper has denied all allegations.