Cassie Ventura completed 10 hours of Q&A led by the prosecution on Wednesday, filling two days with vivid, graphic testimony painting her ex-boyfriend Sean Combs – better known as Diddy – as violent and depraved, an insatiable sex addict, who exploited professional leverage over Cassie to subject her to years of abusive and degrading treatment.
Here are my three takeaways from today.
Video doesn’t lie
For the third straight day, prosecutors found a way to show the jury their most damning evidence – the infamous security footage of Combs dragging Cassie back to their suite after she sought to escape a marathon “freak-off” sex party at a Los Angeles hotel.
The jury saw a selfie Cassie took revealing a fat lip and sunglasses covering her black eye. Back at her apartment, Cassie received numerous texts from Combs begging her to call and lying that “the cops are here.” Cassie only texted back: “It was time for me to go. You are sick for thinking it’s OK to do what you’ve done. Please stay far away from me.”
Seeing Cassie’s bruised face, a friend at the apartment did call police, but Cassie declined to name her assaulter
Later, Combs showed up outside her 17th floor residence, yelling and banging on the front door.
Cassie did not let him in.
Incredibly, a few days later, she let Combs accompany her to the Hollywood premiere of ‘The Perfect Match’, a movie she was in. Her long gown did not cover up a bruise on her shoulder.
Other Cassie photos shown to the jury – a bloody, swollen eyebrow from a punch, a bruise on her lower back from a kick – underscored Comb’s years-long physical abuse in incidents sometimes witnessed by Combs’ security guards and assistants.
After a 2009 beating inside a Cadillac Escalade, his staff kept her cooped up in a LA hotel for over a week while she healed. Realising she could not leave the hotel, Cassie testified, “I understood Sean’s capabilities, his access to guns, like, and the threats that he made prior to that.”
Janice Combs, mother of Sean Diddy Combs, left, arrives at Manhattan federal court on Tuesday 13th May. Credit: AP News
Binders full of men
At Combs’ behest, Cassie had sex with so many male escorts that their head shots fill a binder.
One by one, prosecutor Emily Johnson had Cassie describe a dozen partners as their faces appeared on court evidence screens.
The couple’s regular gigolos went by names like Ash, Islander, Jake, Vin, and Tommy. Most were black, a few were white, and one was Hispanic.
She told the jury she submitted to “hundreds” of freak-offs for desired moments of one-on-one time with Combs and to please him, but she hated the parties and could not perform unless she was on drugs like ketamine.
“It was my preferred drug, because it was very dissociative,” Cassie said, adding that it made her feel “not present in the moment.”
Cassie developed a dependence on opioid painkillers during her recovery from “freak-off” sessions.
Since a stint in rehab in 2022, she’s been clean, she said, but she’s also undergone trauma therapy, fighting suicidal feelings.
Crying on the witness stand, Cassie said in 2023 she contemplated running into LA traffic, telling her husband while their two young children slept: “You can do this without me, like you don’t need me anymore.”
Diddy has admitted to beating his ex-girlfriend Cassie. Credit: AP News
Blackmail is a powerful motivator
Listening to hours of testimony about a decade of abuse and coerced sex with strangers begs the question why didn’t Cassie break up with Combs sooner than she eventually did in 2018?
A chief reason, Cassie said, was she felt “trapped” by fear that Combs might leak “freak-off” videos.
“He would mention them when he was upset about something… That he was going to release them and embarrass me and, yeah, put my career in jeopardy,” she told the jury.
“It could ruin everything that I worked for” she added.
Cassie sued Combs for damages in a 2023 civil lawsuit, and they reached a settlement in one day – with Combs agreeing to pay her $20 million, Cassie disclosed.
Asked why she’s testifying, she said: “I can’t carry this anymore. I can’t carry the shame, the guilt, the way I was guided to treat people like they were disposable. What’s right is right, and what’s wrong is wrong. And I’m here to do the right thing.”
What’s Next?
Cassie’s cross-examination will take up all day Thursday and the better part of Friday, ending the first week of the trial.
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