NEW YORK (TNND) — R&B singer Cassie is 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 her life with her ex-boyfriend.
She 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.
Lawyers for Combs have yet to cross-examine Cassie, a type of questioning that will give them an opportunity to challenge her credibility or poke holes in her accounts of what happened.
Combs’s attorneys argued he could be violent but never participated in sex trafficking and racketeering, telling jurors that the sexual acts were consensual.
The trial is expected to last about two months.
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.
In 2024, hotel surveillance video made public by CNN showed Combs beating her at a Los Angeles hotel in 2016, which was shown to jurors on Monday.
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.
