Elisabeth Ovesen, formerly known as Karrine Steffans, published a tell-all book in 2005, Confessions Of A Video Vixen, about her experiences of the hip-hop industry. Now, she is speaking out in the wake of the allegations against Sean “Diddy” Combs.
“What Sean Combs is being accused of is not rare. He’s not an anomaly.”
For a year in the early noughties, Elisabeth Ovesen was a hip-hop video star dancing alongside some of the biggest names in the business. It was an era of big-budget music videos filled with, in rap especially, money, cars, and women.
She kept diaries. In 2005, she published Confessions Of A Video Vixen, recounting her difficult upbringing and relationships before finding a seemingly glamorous lifeline to financial security.
Under the name Karrine Steffans, she detailed her experiences on video sets as a 22-year-old woman, her relationships and sexual encounters with rappers, other music stars and executives. Most of her own experiences involving famous stars were consensual, she says; the book is a cautionary tale about a feted industry, her stories highlighting misogyny and power imbalances in terms of age and status, how women were used and discarded, rather than criminal behaviour.
But Ovesen says she was also aware of a much darker side to the music industry, and Hollywood in general.
In the wake of the #MeToo movement – and most recently the charges filed in the US against rapper Sean “Diddy” Combs, which he has strenuously denied – she says she wants people to know there are others “getting away” with similar behaviour and crimes.
Her words echo those of lawyer Tony Buzbee, who has filed several lawsuits against Combs. He has also claimed A-listers are paying off victims to avoid being publicly named.
‘Everything that’s coming out wasn’t a secret’
Speaking to Sky News on Zoom, Ovesen recounts the night she first met Combs, saying she was “kind of ordered” to his house. Despite this, in hindsight, being a “weird” experience, she says he treated her well and with respect. “We’re at a club, I was with people he knew, our cars were leaving at the same time,” she says. Combs leaned out of a window to talk to the men in her car, “talking about me like I’m property”.
The men decided she would go to his house, she says. “It was kind of like, ‘send her’. In retrospect now I realise how weird that is.”
She says this was shortly after Combs’ break-up with Jennifer Lopez in 2001. “He was very sweet and very docile with me and very respectful. The next morning we had brunch at his house… again, [he was] pleasant, warm.” She says she went to other parties with Combs and he was always the same.
But he knew she kept diaries, she claims. “So my experiences with him are a lot different than hundreds of other people’s… I have seen him flare up. I have seen things that did not involve me.”
These are not her stories to tell, she says. “I don’t want to overshadow actual victims. I’m nobody’s victim.”
However, Ovesen says she became aware of the hip-hop star’s alleged behaviour, his abuse of former girlfriend Cassie, which he publicly apologised for, and the claims of “freak-off” parties detailed in the charges against him.
“I knew what kind of person he was to other people. Everything that’s coming out now about Sean wasn’t a secret… him and Cassie, that was an open secret in LA, in the industry. Everyone knew. The issue with something like that is that if someone says, ‘yeah, I was there, I’ve seen it. I know for sure’. Then the question becomes, well, what were you doing there?”
Misogyny and abuse in the hip-hop industry, and in the wider music industry – Hollywood in general – is rife, Ovesen says.
“If we’re looking at this one person and the industry this person is in, now let’s look at all the men who are not saying anything at all,” she says. “I want to be very clear that what Sean is being accused of is not rare. He’s not an anomaly… the behaviour is learned and perpetuated.”
Ovesen says some men she knew from the industry at the time had a family home – “and then there’s a party house”. Drugs were rife, she says, and she witnessed heroin, cocaine and crack being taken “by prominent celebrity men”.
Women are treated as objects and often suffer sexual abuse, she says. Some men too, and under-age boys and girls, she claims.
Artists “have the same agents, the same managers, the same handlers, the same accountants… they have the same friends. They share jets. They use each other’s houses. They share women. They share secrets. It’s not [just] a Sean Combs problem, it is a worldwide issue. It’s about men with money, men with power.”
When Ovesen arrived in LA, she was looking for dancing work. Being “discovered” for music videos, with payment of thousands of dollars for a day or two on set, would set her up. But she says she was never naïve about the industry and also acknowledges that a lot of her experiences were “fun”.
“I always knew what it was. I always knew why I was there. Women were being used as props and to make the men look good, and we were disposable and not treated with respect, for the most part. But coming from my particular background – having been an exotic dancer – that didn’t deter me or bother me at the time.”
CCTV cameras and NDAs
This is no longer Ovesen’s world, she points out. She has published several books since her first, and has also given lectures about her experiences. However, she says she has friends in the industry who say things haven’t changed.
She claims she went to house parties and woke to “screaming in the middle of the night – women being beaten, slapped, pushed around”, as well as men being abused, and closeted artists who feel “shame”, which turns to anger, “around sexual proclivities”.
Non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) are signed and people are often paid off, she says. “It’s not rare or weird, it’s just the way it always has been, where the men do awful things and then they pay people off.” NDAs were often presented at the doors to celebrity homes before parties. Ovesen says she signed one herself on one occasion in 2000, but refused after this.
“They have cameras everywhere,” she says, as would be typical for security of an expensive property. “Not only is that NDA going to tell you, whatever you see here stays in this house, it’s also going to explain if anything happens to you, you can’t sue. And there’s also a clause about any videotaping.”
Ovesen claims there are prominent actors, artists, producers and executives all involved in similar behaviour. She never witnessed an alleged “freak-off” party – because, she says again, Combs was aware she kept a diary. “But did I know about them? Yes. Did I hear about them? Yes.”
There are others who have “their own version”, she says. “I’m thinking of one actor in particular – an Oscar-winning actor”.
She says she was called a “whore” and a liar when she published her book, and in the years afterwards. People were “angry I discussed men they revered in a way that didn’t uphold that reverence”, she says. But nothing was sugarcoated, even “my willing participation. I didn’t try to make myself look good, I just told the truth”.
Ovesen wanted people to know what the industry was like. “Women are shamed about our consensual sex, we’re shamed about our non-consensual sex. Women are shamed no matter what they do.”
Since the rise of the #MeToo movement, she has noticed a change in the reaction, from younger women discovering her for the first time. She is frustrated there had to be a change at all, but pleased for younger women, she says. Next year, she will release an updated version of her book, marking 20 years since it was published.
“I want this new generation to understand how important it is to believe women, to support each other.”
What is Combs accused of?