Sean 'Diddy' Combs' Former Backup Dancer Tanika Ray 'Knew to Avoid' the Disgraced Rapper 'at All Costs'

She saw the signs.

Sean "Diddy" Combs' former backup dancer Tanika Ray has spoken out following a string of serious sexual assault and trafficking allegations against the famed rapper.

Ray, who also used to host Extra, said she decided to break her silence on the matter after listening to The Grio’s creative director and former MSNBC host Touré share a disturbing story about Combs during an interview with Joy Reid on Tuesday night, March 26.

Touré admitted he knew the Bad Boy Records founder "well enough to call him" and ask for a favor, as he explained a time from roughly a decade ago when he phoned Combs to see if he would hire one of his male family members as an intern.

The "I'll Be Missing You" rapper said "yes," however, Touré claimed his relative's internship "stopped abruptly like three or four months into it."

"I spoke to my family member, like, ‘What happened?'” the former Rolling Stone and MTV News correspondent detailed. "And they wouldn’t say… and years later, they finally came out — and this is a male — and said that Puff had said, ‘Come home. Stay the night with me or the internship is over.'"

Touré confessed his family member declined Combs' demands, stating, "'Absolutely not.' And the internship ended."

Reacting to Touré's shocking interview with a video shared to Instagram, Ray revealed: "Oh yeah, you know we all have stories… Seriously we all have stories."

Never miss a story — sign up for the OK! newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what OK! has to offer. It’s gossip too good to wait for!

"Mine is horrific and only five people know it, and I probably will never tell it," the media personality, who worked for Combs in the '90s, declared, noting she's "intimately aware that you tell your truth, and you become victimized over and over and over and over, and mind you, I’ve then interviewed him many times."

Ray admitted she has a hard time sharing specifics about her experience with Combs because "it’s just so traumatizing."

"Women just want to live every day and feel safe, and when we revisit… we live in a state of victimhood, and nobody wants to live there," she expressed. "So, for people, who say, ‘Why didn’t you say something then?’ Because we just want to live. We want to be happy, and we really just want to forget the trauma. So, there’s that."

Regardless, Ray said she "knew to avoid him at all costs," adding, "yes, I danced for him and kept my space. I interviewed him for his projects and kept my space. Nothing that is happening is surprising."

"If I told my story in 1996 then What??" Ray pointed out. "I saved myself."

"Now if someone needs me to pile on my story, give me a call. But I think Cassie got it!!" she concluded in reference to Combs' ex-girlfriend Casandra "Cassie" Ventura — who sued the rapper in November 2023 after allegedly experiencing physical abuse, rape and s-- trafficking while tied romantically to the award-winning artist for more than a decade.