NEW YORK (TNND) — R&B singer Cassie was back in court on Wednesday to resume testimony in the sex trafficking trial of embattled music mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs.
Cassie, whose legal name is Casandra Ventura, is a key witness in the trial and was on the stand for about five hours on Tuesday recounting grotesque and humiliating details of the 10-year relationship with her ex-boyfriend.
Combs, 55, has pleaded not guilty to a five-count indictment and faces a minimum sentence of 15 years in prison and a maximum sentence of life in prison if convicted on all charges. He is facing charges of sex trafficking by force, fraud, or coercion, transportation for purposes of prostitution, and racketeering conspiracy.
The National News Desk’s Geoff Harris was outside the courtroom in Manhattan on Monday and Tuesday to cover the beginning of what is expected to be a two-month long trial.
According to CNN and The Associated Press who were permitted to be inside the courtroom, Cassie described to prosecutors being pressured into degrading sexual encounters known as “freak offs” with paid sex workers and recounted being beaten by Combs when she did something he considered wrong.
Ventura testified that if Combs disapproved of her, his staff would take away her belongings.
“I would get my car taken away. I got kicked out of the house, my apartment. I had jewelry taken away. It was very random, depending on how he felt,” she said, reported by CNN.
When asked by a prosecutor if she would ever try to fight back against Combs, Ventura said she tried to earlier in the relationship but she learned that “it could escalate the fight more, make it worse for myself.”
Ventura testified that she saw Combs physically abuse some of his employees as well as other people. She said that she saw Combs drag his assistant “Mia” out of her bed after resisting when he tried to take her phone.
She also said that she saw Combs hold one of her friends over a balcony railing in her Los Angeles apartment, according to CNN.
“There was an incident where I was asleep in my room and when I came out Sean was holding her and threw her onto the patio furniture,” Ventura said.
Prosecutor Emily Johnson showed a headshot of the friend, with Ventura testifying that she was still friends with her.
Lawyers were expected to cross-examine Cassie later Wednesday, giving them an opportunity to challenge her credibility or poke holes in her accounts of what happened. But the defense’s cross-examination of Ventura will begin tomorrow morning.
The judge said that both prosecution and defense have to resolve issues regarding the cross-examination before it starts, according to CNN.
Combs’s attorneys argued Monday he could be violent but never participated in sex trafficking and racketeering, telling jurors that the sexual acts were consensual.
The alleged abuse of Ventura came to light when she filed a civil lawsuit against Combs in November 2023, accusing the artist of rape and repeated physical abuse over roughly a decade.
The lawsuit was settled privately without Combs commenting on the allegations or admitting wrongdoing. Ventura testified in court Wednesday that she agreed to settle with Combs for $20 million after filing the lawsuit against him.
Ventura wrote a book in 2023 about the pain she was in from what she experienced with him. She said that she sent the book through a lawyer to Combs, offering him the rights to the book for $30 million.
“I wanted to be compensated for the time, the pain, the many many years of having to fix my life.”
As Ventura testified Tuesday about the abuse she suffered, a defense complaint was made about that testimony not being specific enough, prompting a prosecutor to elicit a history of notable events of violence Ventura suffered from Combs.
She testified that the first violent event came early in their relationship in 2007. Ventura said she was at a dinner with “Sean and friends” when she spotted Combs flirting with somebody.
She said she shrugged her shoulders when somebody else who saw it looked at her. But then, she said, Combs attacked her in a car after they left the venue.
“He knocked me around and was just hitting me,” she said.
Ventura testified that she fell to the floor of the car after Combs hit her on the side of the head. “I was just shocked,” she said. “I didn’t necessarily understand what happened and why he was so angry.”
In 2024, hotel surveillance video made public by CNN showed Combs beating her at a Los Angeles hotel in 2016. The jury viewed the hotel surveillance video at least five times so far throughout the trial, according to CNN.
After the video was aired, Combs posted a video on Instagram apologizing and saying he was “disgusted” by his actions. He did not name Ventura during his apology.
Photographs Cassie took in 2016 of her swollen lip after the 2016 hotel attack were also shown to jurors, when she testified she took the selfies during her Uber ride after leaving the hotel, CNN reported.
She said once a friend saw her injuries they called police but she refused to reveal who injured her, stating, “Just in that moment, I didn’t want to hurt him that way. It was just too much going on.”
Ventura said Combs claimed police were about to arrest him. And when she refused to accept his phone calls, Combs told her that if she didn’t pick up the phone, she’d “never hear [his] voice again,” Ventura said.
In 2016, two days after Combs beat and kicked Ventura at a Los Angeles hotel, they were photographed attending the premiere of the film “The Perfect Match.” Ventura said she used makeup to cover her bruises and sneaked into a popcorn closet at the movie theater to switch dresses for an after-party so bruises on her legs wouldn’t be visible.
Jurors were shown the pictures of the two at the movie premiere, with Ventura describing the bruises that were visible in the photographs.
When attending the Cannes Film Festival in 2013, Ventura said she and Combs got into a fight, and she didn’t have a place to stay.
She testified that Combs accused her of taking drugs from him and kicked her off the yacht where they were staying. Ventura said she left the boat without shoes. Her passport and other belongings were also left behind, she said.
Ventura said she ended up crashing at a hotel where Combs’ employees were staying. After their trip to the film festival, Combs began playing a recording of a “freak off” on his laptop computer as he and Cassie sat together on a commercial flight to New York.
Cassie said Combs told her he was “going to embarrass me and release them.”
The prosecutor posing the questions, Emily Johnson, asked if there were “people around you” when Combs was playing the videos on the phone. Cassie said there were.
After landing in New York, she testified, they went to dinner and then had another “freak off” right afterward.
Ventura testified that Combs would threaten to release the recordings of the “freak offs,” with Ventura saying that she was always worried that he would get mad enough to release to them to the public.
She said it could ruin everything she’d worked for and “make me look like a slut.”
“I feared for my career. I feared for my family. It’s just embarrassing. It’s horrible and disgusting. No one should do that to anyone,” she said.
Ventura told jurors she “felt trapped” by the hip-hop mogul.
After looking through a binder of photos provided by prosecutors, Ventura identified 13 male sex workers she said she recruited at Combs’ behest for “freak offs” in Las Vegas, Miami and Los Angeles.
She said she had sex with all of them, though she couldn’t remember all of their names. Some she knew only by their first names. Some were flown in for the occasion. On Tuesday, Ventura had identified a half dozen other escorts. One of them, she said, was advertised as “The Punisher.”
The Associated Press reported jurors were shown photos of Cassie and Combs at a movie premiere soon after the attack. She described bruises on her body that could be seen in the photos and that makeup was not able to cover all of the damage.
Images were shown to only the jury and the witness stand because of their sensitive nature. Prosecutors provided binders with printed copies to the judge and defense counsel. Five images taken from videos that were on Ventura’s electronic devices that she provided to investigators were also shown to the jury.
One juror’s eyes widened as the first image — of Ventura and a male sex worker she identified as Jules — appeared on a screen in front of him. Another juror shook his head from side to side as the image was shown.
Many took notes as Ventura described what was happening in the images.
The prosecutor said that during direct examination, they will not be showing videos of Ventura involved in sexual experiences. It is unknown if the defense will show some of these videos.
At one point, Combs asked his lawyer, Mark Agnifilo, for the binder. Combs discreetly thumbed through the images, keeping them out of view of the public in the gallery behind him. After a few moments, Combs closed the book and handed it back to Agnifilo.
The jury was also shown photos of Ventura with a black eye from 2013 or 2014, with most of the black eye being covered by sunglasses. She said that she did not remember how she got the black eye from Combs, but she did remember hiding from Combs under a tractor for hours, according to CNN.
Ventura testified in the Wednesday morning session that she complained to Combs once about the sexual things he made her do and the abuse that came with it by telling him, “You treat me like Ike.”
The comment was a reference to Ike Turner, who was described in singer Tina Turner’s autobiography and a film adapted from it as an abusive lover.
On one occasion in 2013, while she was packing to go to Drake’s music festival in Canada, Ventura said Combs scuffled with her friends and threw her into a bed frame.
She said she suffered a “pretty significant gash” above her left eye. Combs’ security personnel brought her to a plastic surgeon in Beverly Hills to get the wound stitched up.
Afterward, she texted Combs a photo of her injured face and wrote: “So you can remember.”
Combs replied: “You don’t know when to stop. You pushed it too far. And continued to push. Sad.”
At least once, Ventura said, one of the escorts who participated in “freak offs” came along with his girlfriend. She said she had sex with the escort at the sex club.
At times, she told Combs it made her uncomfortable to go to sex clubs.
“I’m not into seeing the person you’re in love with with somebody else,” she said.
Ventura said he responded by continuing to push for it, saying it would “be a fun thing to do and we wouldn’t go for long.”
In 2011, Ventura emailed her mother saying that Combs was threatening to release sex tapes of her as well as threatening to hurt both her and Scott Mescudi, also known as Kid Cudi, who Ventura was dating at the time.
Ventura testified that Combs lunged at her during a “freak off” after finding out that she was dating Mescudi. She said that he came at her with a wine opener between his fingers after he found emails that referenced another man on her phone, according to CNN.
She said she was able to escape and called Mescudi from a burner phone to pick her up.
Ventura also testified that Combs said Mescudi’s car would blow up after Combs found the messages between her and Mescudi. A spokesperson for Mescudi confirmed to the New York Times in 2023 that Mescudi’s car did explode in his driveway.
After a “freak off”, Ventura would try to recover by taking IV fluids, getting massages and having a chef cook her meals.
She said she developed an opioid addiction after using them following the “freak offs” as a coping mechanism. “Opioids make me feel numb, which is why I relied on them so heavily.” During their relationship, Ventura sought professional help for her opiate use. She testified that she last did drugs in 2022 and no longer uses, CNN reports.
Ventura said she developed urinary tract infections frequently from the sexual experiences. After “freak offs,” she said, she felt emotionally “just really empty and I felt just gross.”
She said she also “felt like I did my job.”
In 2018, Ventura said that her relationship with her best friend of 17 years ended after an altercation with Combs.
After she and Combs broke up, they went to dinner in Malibu for what Ventura says was a “closure conversation.” Ventura said Combs was acting romantic at dinner and drove her home from the restaurant.
With a long pause, Ventura said “And then he raped me in my living room,” according to CNN.
She testified that she said no and was crying.
Even after their relationship ended, Ventura said that Combs still threatened her. She said that Combs wanted to be reimbursed because her now husband, Alex Fine, was her personal trainer Combs paid for at the time.
“There was way more than ‘Freak Offs,’” she said. “There was abuse, there was many things that happened over our relationship.”
She testified that she and Combs stayed in touch to “check in” after they ended things in 2018.
Ventura broke down in tears when talking about going to trauma therapy and rehab in February 2023, CNN reports.
“I didn’t want to be alive anymore at that point,” she said. “I couldn’t take the pain that I was in anymore, and so I just tried to walk out the front door into traffic and my husband would not let me.”
Ventura, 38, who is visibly pregnant and avoided the press outside the courtroom Tuesday, said she met Combs in 2005 when she was 19 and he was 37. He signed her to his Bad Boy Records label and, within a few years, they started dating platonically.
Combs was arrested in September 2024, about roughly six months after federal authorities raided his homes in Los Angeles and Miami. He has been jailed in Brooklyn since his arrest.
If you or someone you know is struggling with abuse, contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline for help.
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Editor’s note: The Associated Press contributed to this article.
