Oh, we see the headline, don’t we? ACQUITTED! In all caps, in all drama. But scroll down two inches and the ink bleeds with the truth: “Guilty on lesser charges.”
Let me translate that into plain American outrage for you: A man was found not guilty of sex trafficking—but guilty of transporting people for prostitution. Like there’s a magical difference between coercion with a spreadsheet and coercion with a chain.
It’s a sleight of hand, a linguistic magic trick so old and dusty it might as well have been pulled from a 19th-century courtroom. What’s the real difference between trafficking and “transporting for prostitution” when you’re the man with the keys, the money, the power, and the silence?
Let me say this for the record and the heavens: A lesser charge does not equal lesser harm.
And while Sean Combs may have escaped the full legal weight of “trafficking”—whatever fig-leaf technicality that word was resting on—he did not escape conviction. And he sure as hell won’t escape the verdict of the women watching, the victims remembering, or the public waking up.
The system may be built to protect the famous. The language may be tailored to coddle the comfortable. But no number of press releases or legal tap-dancing can erase what was just confirmed:
Guilty.
Guilty of abuse of power. Guilty of orchestrating a system where women and men were commodified, used, and discarded like receipts. Guilty of being one of the many men who believe wealth can write the ending to any horror story.
So no, I won’t be clapping for “acquitted” but I’ll be clapping for the ones who testified to infinity and beyond. For the ones who survived. For the journalists who kept asking. For the attorneys who kept filing. For the women and men who keep coming forward—even when the world tells them it isn’t “technically” trafficking.
This wasn’t justice. It was a footnote in a long, dirty chapter.
And we are not finished reading. This is not the end of the saga.
Horrendous miscarriage of justice.
Oh, we see the headline, don’t we? ACQUITTED! In all caps, in all drama. But scroll down two inches and the ink bleeds with the truth: “Guilty on lesser charges.”
Let me translate that into plain American outrage for you: A man was found not guilty of sex trafficking—but guilty of transporting people for prostitution. Like there’s a magical difference between coercion with a spreadsheet and coercion with a chain.
It’s a sleight of hand, a linguistic magic trick so old and dusty it might as well have been pulled from a 19th-century courtroom. What’s the real difference between trafficking and “transporting for prostitution” when you’re the man with the keys, the money, the power, and the silence?
Let me say this for the record and the heavens: A lesser charge does not equal lesser harm.
And while Sean Combs may have escaped the full legal weight of “trafficking”—whatever fig-leaf technicality that word was resting on—he did not escape conviction. And he sure as hell won’t escape the verdict of the women watching, the victims remembering, or the public waking up.
The system may be built to protect the famous. The language may be tailored to coddle the comfortable. But no number of press releases or legal tap-dancing can erase what was just confirmed:
Guilty.
Guilty of abuse of power. Guilty of orchestrating a system where women and men were commodified, used, and discarded like receipts. Guilty of being one of the many men who believe wealth can write the ending to any horror story.
So no, I won’t be clapping for “acquitted” but I’ll be clapping for the ones who testified to infinity and beyond. For the ones who survived. For the journalists who kept asking. For the attorneys who kept filing. For the women and men who keep coming forward—even when the world tells them it isn’t “technically” trafficking.
This wasn’t justice. It was a footnote in a long, dirty chapter.
And we are not finished reading. This is not the end of the saga.
How TF is he convicted on transporting people for prostitution but acquitted for sex trafficking?