Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs’ ex-girlfriend Cassie Ventura told a New York courtroom she had been controlled, violently abused, and forced into ‘freak off’ sex parties by the rap mogul.
The R&B singer, who is heavily pregnant, told jurors “freak offs” became almost a weekly occurrence over the next decade, to satisfy Diddy’s sexual urges.
Ms Ventura is the prosecution’s star witness, and became tearful as she detailed the alleged abuse and control.
Diddy faces five criminal counts: a racketeering conspiracy, two counts of sex trafficking by force, fraud or coercion, and two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution. He denies all the charges.
In her evidence, Ms Ventura told the court:
- Diddy carefully choreographed the sex parties, and provided drugs including ecstasy, cocaine, marijuana, ketamine and magic mushrooms
- “Freak offs” sometimes last four days, and took days more to recover from
- She said Diddy was a “scary person”, he kept guns in his home, and she lived in constant fear
- Her music career was controlled by the mogul, as well as large parts of her personal life
Cassie Ventura wipes away tears during testimony to prosecutor Emily Johnson
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Ms Ventura said she was 19 when she met Diddy, she fell in love with the rap mogul, who was 37, and they began an 11-year relationship.
She was signed to his rap label during the romance, and she told jurors they enjoyed good times but she also saw Diddy’s dark side.
“If they were violent arguments, it would usually result in some sort of physical abuse and dragging”, she said.
The criminal case was sparked by the release last year of a bombshell video, showing Diddy, wearing just a towel, kicking Ms Ventura as she lay on the floor of a hotel corridor before dragging her away.
Ms Ventura said abuse was regular in their relationship, alleging the rapper would mash her head, drag her, kick her and stomp her in the head when she was down.
Asked how frequently he became violent with her, Cassie softly responded: “Too frequently.”
Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs makes a hand gesture to family members arriving at his sex trafficking trial in New York
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Ms Ventura said the parties, which were carefully orchestrated by Diddy and his entourage, stemmed from his interest in voyeurism.
She told the court escorts were hired for an “experience so that I could perform for Sean”.
“Eventually it became a job for me, pretty much”, she added.
Ms Ventura told the court she was directed to find the escorts through classifieds ads on platforms such as Craigslist or Backpage, and then through a service called Cowboys 4 Angels.
Escorts were paid up to $6,000 for the sexual encouters, while Diddy provided the drugs.
Ms Ventura said the parties often took place at Diddy’s Los Angeles home, and were also held in hotel rooms in New York, Miami, Atlanta, Las Vegas, Ibiza, and the Turks and Caicos islands.
‘Freak-off’ parties were often so intense that it would take days to recover, said Ms Ventura.
She felt “humiliated” and “worthless” after participating, she told the court, adding that they used drugs to stay awake for up to four days.
“I was in love and wanted to make him happy”, she said.
She said she was sometimes order to take part while menstruating, and satisfied Diddy’s demands for her to be urinated on.
“Freak-offs became a job where there was no space to do anything else but recover and just try to feel normal again.”
Asked how she felt when Combs first proposed engaging in a “freak off,” Cassie said: “I just remember my stomach falling to my butt. Just the nervousness and confusion in that moment.”
She said she didn’t feel like she could say no to Combs because she “didn’t know what `no’ could be, or what `no’ could turn into,” which she said she learned could include violence and blackmail threats.
“Sean controlled a lot of my life, whether it was career, the way I dressed, everything, everything. I just didn’t have much say in it at the time,” Cassie testified.
She described to the court coping with his mood swings and violent outbursts, saying; “Make the wrong face and the next thing I knew I would get hit in the face,.”
Shown still images from the now-infamous 2016 security camera footage of Combs beating her at a Los Angeles hotel, Cassie said prior to the altercation: “We were having an encounter called a `Freak Off’ and I was leaving there.”
Asked how often that kind of abuse happened, she replied: “Too many to count.”
Ms Ventura said Diddy “controlled a lot of my life” including her music career, as well as how she dressed and who she spoke to.
She said he had particular requests for the “freak-offs”, including white nail varnish or with French tips, wearing high heels, and combing her hair in a specific way.
She also claimed her laptop and phone were sometimes confiscated by the rapper or one of his entourage as “punishment”.
And she alleged Diddy kept guns in the safes at his homes, and on multiple occasions she was asked to carry a weapon.
Ms Ventura said they was part of Diddy’s rivalry with rap mogul Suge Knight.
“We were having a freak-off in one of his homes in LA and he said Suge was at Mel’s Diner and we packed up and drove down there”, she said.
“I was screaming and crying: ‘Please don’t do anything stupid.’ I didn’t know what they were going to do.”
New York trial ‘a circus’
NBC News described a “circus-like atmosphere” around the courtroom on the first day of the trial, with at least 20 fans of the hip hop star camping overnight alongside dozens of cameras and spectators.
In her opening statement, prosecutor Emily Johnson said that Diddy ran a criminal enterprise facilitated by an “inner circle” of employees.
She alleged that Diddy made an employee drive him to the home of a man he believed to be romantically involved with Ms Ventura.
Johnson alleged that when Diddy found Ventura “he beat her brutally, kicking her in the back and flinging her around like a rag doll.” She told the juror that Diddy “threatened her and said if she defies her again he will release video of her having sex with male escorts.”
Janice Combs, mother of Sean Combs, and other family members leave on the first day of Diddy’s trial
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The prosecution alleged that Diddy and his bodyguards tried to cover up surveillance video of him assaulting Ventura in an LA hotel hallway in March 2016, attempting to “get what they thought was the only copy.”
She alleged that Diddy gave “a brown paper bag full of $100,000 in cash” to a security guard named Israel Florez to “broker a deal.”
Florez, now a Los Angeles Police Department officer, testified that he was on shift at the InterContinental hotel on the day that Ventura was allegedly assaulted.
He said that he was called to a woman in distress on the sixth floor of the building and recognized Diddy, who was in a towel. Florez said he did not recognize Ventura at the time, but observed that she was “scared.”
“She was in the corner, hood on, covered up. I couldn’t see her face, she was pretty much in the corner. On the floor was a destroyed flower vase.”
“I started to leave and (Combs) called for me,” Florez said. “He had a sack of money and he threw it at me and said, ‘Don’t tell anyone.'”
Florez testified that Diddy tried to take the phones of hotel security guards.
“He came to the door, closed the door behind him, he grabbed the phone my colleague was holding because he thought he was being recorded. He eventually gave the phone back,” Florez said.
“We said we are not recording you and de-escalated the situation,” he added.
Florez said that when Diddy attempted to grab his phone, he pinned him to the wall.
Florez also testified that he took some cellphone videos, including one in which he is motioning for Ventura to enter a room. He said he took the video to show his wife, as he thought she wouldn’t believe him if he told her what had happened.
Cassia Ventura allegedly experienced years of abuse
The prosecution alleged that Ventura, Diddy’s ex, tried to run away from years of abuse that endured between 2006 and 2018. Diddy allegedly threatened her with the release of videos of sex acts that he’d forced her to participate in.
Ventura was allegedly forced to participate in “freak offs” — sex parties that involved sex workers which would last for days and involved drugs.
“Cassie tried her first freak off because she loved him and wanted to make him happy… If Cassie didn’t do what he wanted, the consequences were severe,” Johnson said.
Prosecutor Emily Johnson points to Diddy before U.S. District Judge Arun Subramanian at his sex trafficking trial
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However, the defence told a different story. They said that Ventura ended her relationship with Diddy after realising that she would “never” mean as much to him as his former girlfriend, Kim Porter.
Porter died from pneumonia in 2019.
“When Combs said Kim Porter was his soulmate, Cassie realised all the things she would not be, she wanted to be Combs’ wife,” Diddy’s lawyer Teny Geragos said.
She added that Ventura left Diddy on her own terms after coming to the conclusion that “she would never be that, never be his wife, never be his love of his life.”
The defence said that Diddy’s accusers were not forced into sex acts, nor did he pay sex workers to travel for commercial sex acts.
Instead, Geragos said that the alleged victims, including Ventura, were incentivized to “lie” in pursuit of a “money grab.”
“They will tell you they were victimized. Ask yourself, what is their motive?” Geragos asked. “The answer is simple: money.”
Daniel Philip, sex worker, provides testimony
Daniel Philip, who worked as a male escort, appeared as a witness, confirming that he was paid money to have sex with Ventura around 2012.
He said he was paid thousands of dollars to have sex with her and rub baby oil on each other while Diddy sat in a corner and masturbated. He said that Diddy would instruct him how to have sex with Ventura.
Philip alleged that Diddy made it clear that he should keep quiet about what was happening.
“He asked for my driver’s license and took a picture of it and said, ‘It’s just for insurance,’ that if I spoke about it to anybody, I understood it to be that he was threatening me,” he said.
Philip said on one occasion, he saw Diddy assault Ventura because she didn’t come to his side when he called for her.
“Someone was being slapped around and slammed around the room,” Daniel Phillip said
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“I heard him yell out, ‘Babe, come here,'” Phillip said, explaining that Cassie had asked for a moment while she finished work on her computer.
“Combs came out of the room and I saw a liquor bottle fly past her and hit the wall,” Philip said. “He grabbed her by her hair and dragged her by the hair into the bedroom. She was screaming and he pulled her into the bedroom. And what I heard sounded like him slapping her.”
He said that Diddy said: “‘B—- when I tell you to come, you come now, not later.'”
Philip said there was another occasion where he could hear Ventura yelling “I’m sorry, I’m sorry” from a bedroom at the Essex Hotel.
“Someone was being slapped around and slammed around the room,” Phillip said. “And I looked around the corner and I saw Mr Combs walk out of the hotel altogether without clothes, he might have had a towel on.”
He said Ventura then ran out of the room and jumped into his lap, trembling and scared.
Single mum among alleged victims
Prosecutors allege that Diddy forced a single mother, “Jane,” to have unprotected sex with escorts and do drugs. The pair met in 2020, according to Johnson.
“She wanted the escorts to wear condoms, but he would not let them. Then he would make her take drugs; she broke down and took ecstasy,” Johnson said.
“One time she vomited, he told her to hurry up and get back in the room where an escort was waiting.”
Diddy’s assistant “Mia” will appear in trial
Prosecutors told the jurors that Diddy’s assistant, “Mia” (a pseudonym), will play a role in the trial.
“She is just beginning to grapple with the times he forced himself on her sexually. She wanted to keep the secret to her grave,” Johnson said.
“They worked punishing hours for the defendant without sleep… They were expected to keep quiet of what they saw and heard in the defendant’s homes.”
The trial is expected to last two months.
