Sean “Diddy” Combs’ ex-girlfriend Cassie Ventura cried Tuesday as she faced her alleged abuser for the first time at his trial.
Ventura, who is eight months pregnant, told the court how she first met Combs when she was 19, when he took an interest in her singing career and signed her to a 10-album deal with his Bad Boy Records label, and said she had been in love with the rapper.
But then she tearfully described the “beatings” he handed out “too often,” and the constant “freak-off” sex performances that “became a job” for her—and told how the drug-fueled orgies could last four-days straight.
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Ventura was in a relationship with Combs for more than a decade from 2005 until 2018. A bombshell video of Combs kicking her and dragging her in a hotel corridor was a key moment in his collapse from mogul to going on trial on charges which could see him jailed for the rest of his life. He denies charges of sex trafficking, racketeering, and prostitution. The trial, at the federal court in Manhattan, New York, is scheduled to last as long as two months.
Ventura said that by her 21st birthday, Combs’ interest in her turned sexual, as the disgraced mogul “introduced” her to “the idea of oral sex.” Combs was 38 at the time.
Reports from inside the courtroom described the singer as tearfully dabbing her eyes with a tissue as she recounted the start of her intimate relationship with Combs.
“It wasn’t something I really understood or did at that point,” she said of oral sex with Combs during her testimony. “He basically taught me how... He made me feel crazy for not reciprocating. At that time I didn’t understand that kind of sexual relationship,” she explained in between pauses and prolonged “breaths,” according to the Daily Mail. “I was so young. I didn’t have even the vocabulary for some of the things we talked about.”
The singer told the judge and jury that not long after they became intimate, the relationship evolved into frequent violence and the “freak-offs” that characterize many of the allegations against Combs.
Ventura was at the center of many of these situations, which could last anywhere from 36 hours to four days, over the course of her troubled courtship with Combs. She participated in her first “freak-off” with Combs in 2008, when she was 22-years-old, according to AP.
Even though she felt confused and dirty after the experience, Ventura said the one thing she enjoyed was “the time spent with” Combs, who she recalled was “really happy with me” afterward.
She went on to tearfully describe the ongoing “freak-offs” as some of the only one-on-one time she had with Combs, and how she went along with them because she “just didn’t want to make him upset.”
She testified that each “freak-off” orgy required 10 large, warmed bottles of Johnson’s baby oil. Combs was so determined that she be “glistening” at all times that he once demanded Ventura get inside an inflatable pool filled with the oil and lubricants while fully clothed. “It was such a mess,” she said, according to AP. “It was like, ‘What are we doing?’”
“The ‘freak-offs’ became a job where there was no space to do anything else but to recover and just try to feel normal again,” she said Tuesday according to The New York Times, recalling that she would spend “days on end” having “sex with strangers” at Combs’ behest.
Ventura said that during these encounters, which entailed “hiring an escort and setting up this experience so that I could perform for Sean,” Combs would “watch me with the other person and actually direct us on what we were doing.”
On Tuesday, a male escort testified that one such disturbing direction from Combs included instructing him to urinate in Ventura’s mouth. When she wasn’t performing sexual acts for Combs, Ventura said she was “too often” physically abused by the rapper, even if she “made the wrong face.”
“He would bash me on my head, knock me over, drag me, kick me, stomp me in the head if I was down,” she said. “I’d get knots in my forehead. Busted lips, swollen lip, swollen eyes... whites of eyes would be red. Bruises all over my body,” she explained, per DailyMail.
In May 2024, CNN published surveillance footage from 2016 which showed Combs running down a hotel hallway, clad only in a towel, and then grabbing Ventura by the back of the head and throwing her to the ground. The footage showed him kicking her several times and then dragging her by the leg back towards their hotel room.
Two days after the disturbing footage was published, Combs released a since-deleted apology video to Instagram in which he called his behavior “inexcusable.”
“I was f---ed up,” he said. “I mean, I hit rock bottom. I make no excuses. My behavior on that video is inexcusable. I take full responsibility for my actions in that video.”
The music mogul claimed the incident led him to seek out professional help, including therapy and rehab, and that he was “committed to be a better man each and every day.”
“I’m not asking for forgiveness,” he said. “I’m truly sorry.”
Ventura’s husband Alex Fine, who she married in 2019 and is the father of her children, was in court to support her.
Ventura’s testimony could take up to four days. She’s expected to take frequent breaks as she delivers the account the prosecution will hang much of its argument on. Combs is facing 15 years to life in prison if convicted.
