The flood of allegations, lawsuits, and prison fees towards Sean “Diddy” Combs started with a 2023 lawsuit by Cassie Ventura, Combs’ former girlfriend and a recording artist for his Dangerous Boy file label underneath the mononym Cassie. The lawsuit was rapidly settled, however it set off a collection of comparable lawsuits and an FBI investigation that led to fees of racketeering, intercourse trafficking, and transportation to interact in prostitution towards the music and style mogul. Disturbing footage of Combs bodily abusing Ventura on the Intercontinental Los Angeles Century Metropolis in 2016 additionally emerged a yr in the past, sparking a assertion from Ventura urging the general public to consider and assist victims of violence. Tuesday, she testified towards Combs in federal courtroom.
Combs’ prison trial started Monday in New York. In her opening assertion, prosecutor Emily A. Johnson cited Ventura’s state of affairs:
Let’s begin now with only one evening. The defendant was on the hunt for his girlfriend, a girl named Cassie. For years, the defendant bodily abused Cassie. He additionally sexually exploited her, forcing her to have intercourse with male escorts whereas he watched and recorded it. However that evening, the defendant discovered he had misplaced management of Cassie. He discovered Cassie was seeing one other man. Livid, he got down to discover Cassie and that different man. However he couldn’t do it by himself. So he took his gun and he took his bodyguard, one in every of his most loyal lieutenants, to get up one of many defendant’s workers in the course of the evening.
The defendant yelled that he was going to kill the person Cassie was with. He demanded that his worker take him to that man’s residence. The defendant compelled the worker out of her condo and into an SUV. They drove to the home. The defendant and his bodyguard broke in, however nobody was there. The defendant didn’t surrender. He saved on the lookout for Cassie. When he lastly discovered her, he did what he had completed numerous instances earlier than. He beat her brutally, kicking her within the again and flinging her round like a rag doll.
All of that violence wasn’t sufficient although. The defendant had to verify he had management over Cassie as soon as once more. So he threatened her. The defendant informed Cassie that if she defied him once more, he would publicly launch the movies of her having intercourse with male escorts that he saved as blackmail. Souvenirs of probably the most humiliating nights of her life.
After the opening assertion, the prosecution confirmed the lodge surveillance video of Combs assaulting Ventura and dropped at the stand Israel Florez, an LA police officer who was a safety guard on the lodge in 2016. He testified that after receiving a distressed name, he encountered Combs and Ventura on the sixth ground of the lodge. He mentioned her eye was purple, and he or she declined his suggestion to name the police.
Prosecutors additionally mentioned the abuse that allegedly happened at Combs’ drug-fueled intercourse events, often called “freak-offs.” Monday’s second witness, a stripper named Daniel Phillip, mentioned he had intercourse with Ventura a number of instances in 2012 and 2013 whereas Combs watched and that he witnessed a number of cases of Combs bodily attacking her. “She actually jumped into my lap, and he or she was shaking, like actually her entire total physique was shaking,” Phillip mentioned of Ventura. “She was terrified.”
In the present day, Ventura took the stand. Because the New York Instances stories, Ventura testified that Combs “stifled” her singing profession and carefully managed her look, as soon as describing her look as “too Mexican.” He generally would confiscate her digital units, together with her telephone and laptop computer, as a type of punishment, and a number of instances requested her to hold a gun for him throughout probably violent encounters with figures akin to trade rival Suge Knight. She mentioned he made her seek advice from him as “pop pop” in emails as a result of that’s what she referred to as her grandfather, which made her really feel “bizarre.”
Ventura described feeling “soiled,” “disgusting,” and “humiliated” after the freak-offs, which she continued taking part in on an ongoing foundation — in areas together with New York Metropolis, Miami, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Las Vegas, Ibiza, and Turks and Caicos — as a result of “I didn’t wish to make him upset. I didn’t wish to make him indignant and remorse telling me about this expertise that was so private.” Throughout these occasions, Ventura mentioned Combs was like a distinct individual: “His eyes go black — the model of him I used to be in love with was not there.”
When you or somebody you recognize is present process sexual abuse, please go to rainn.org or contact the Nationwide Sexual Assault Helpline at 1-800-656-4673.