NOTE: The next article accommodates disturbing particulars and video footage. Please learn at your individual discretion.
Because the intercourse trafficking trial for Sean “Diddy” Combs enters its third day, Combs’ ex-girlfriend, Cassie Ventura, took the stand Wednesday to renew her testimony after a day spent recounting grotesque and humiliating particulars of her life with him.
Ventura is taken into account a star witness for the prosecution and her testimony is especially helpful. Combs was captured on safety video violently assaulting Ventura in a resort hallway in 2016.
Ventura sued Combs in 2023, alleging years of rape and abuse. The go well with was settled inside hours, however was adopted by dozens of comparable authorized claims and touched off a legal investigation.
Throughout her first day of testimony, on the second day of the blockbuster trial, Ventura described being pressured into degrading sexual encounters with paid intercourse employees. She additionally recounted being crushed quite a few instances by Combs when she did issues that displeased him — like smiling at him the unsuitable means.
“You make the unsuitable face and the following factor I knew I used to be getting hit within the face,” she mentioned.
Ventura accused Combs of gaining her subservience by threatening to publicly launch movies of her with male intercourse employees.
Combs’ attorneys have acknowledged the rapper may very well be violent however keep that the sexual acts have been consensual. They are saying nothing he did amounted to intercourse trafficking or racketeering (the fees he faces), however insisted he simply has distinctive sexual proclivities.
Day 3
Ventura returned to the witness stand shortly earlier than 10 a.m. on Wednesday throughout Combs’ sex-trafficking trial, answering questions posed by prosecutor Emily Johnson for a second day.
For a 3rd day in a row, the jury watched the resort surveillance footage of Combs’ 2016 assault on Ventura however the video had no sound. She mentioned she recalled Combs throwing a vase with flowers in it.
“I didn’t get hit. I bear in mind it hitting the wall. He was yelling at me and threw it at me,” she mentioned.
Ventura mentioned that as she was making an attempt to go away the resort, Combs instructed her “that I wasn’t going to go away him there. That I couldn’t.”
The prosecution confirmed two images of Ventura following the resort assault and textual content messages between the previous couple.
Ventura mentioned that she took selfies on her Uber trip away from the resort. She had a swollen lip and testified that underneath her sun shades, she had a black eye.
Combs texted Ventura after the assault and mentioned, “the cops are right here,” begging her to name him. In response to Combs, Ventura mentioned that she had a film premiere for “the most important factor I’ve ever executed in my life” and now she had a “fats lip” and black eye.
“Please keep far-off from me,” she texted him.
Ventura mentioned Combs claimed police have been about to arrest him and instructed her if she didn’t reply his telephone calls she’d “by no means hear my voice once more.”
Ventura’s pal known as the police following the assault they usually confirmed as much as her residence to query her, however she mentioned that she didn’t need to say who assaulted her.
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“Did you need to defend Sean?” Johnson requested.
“Yeah, in fact,” Enterprise replied. “In that second, I didn’t need to damage him that means. I wasn’t prepared.”
Ventura mentioned that after the assault, Combs confirmed as much as her residence and she or he heard “chaos outdoors of the door” together with “banging, kicking, yelling.”
She mentioned that she went to the house of one among Combs’ safety guards, D-Roc, not too lengthy after the assault “to really feel secure.” She then went to Combs’ home to do a becoming for her upcoming transfer premiere for a romantic comedy she starred in known as The Excellent Match.
The premiere happened two days after the resort assault and the jury was proven a photograph of Combs and Ventura on the afterparty. She identified a bruises on her physique that have been seen within the images and mentioned she was unable to cowl up all of the harm with make-up.
The prosecution confirmed a 2016 textual content message from Combs to Ventura in regards to the freak-offs. He proposed they’ve a “correct” freak-off with out the drug ketamine concerned.
In a textual content message, he wrote {that a} “profitable” freak-off was “once we bear in mind.”
“I gained’t convey up once more till you’re in that temper,” he wrote.
Ventura instructed the court docket ketamine was her most well-liked drug in the course of the freak-offs as a result of “it was very dissociative.”
She then mentioned how movies of the freak-offs have been become “blackmail supplies.” She mentioned that when Combs was offended together with her, he usually reminded her of the sexually specific movies he had saved.
“One time I dated another person and that’s what it was all about — ‘I’m going to place out two embarrassing movies of you,’” she mentioned, including that she believed Combs “simply needed to harm me.”
She mentioned the movies may break all the pieces she’d labored for and “make me appear to be a slut.”
“I feared for my profession. I feared for my household. It’s simply embarrassing. It’s horrible and disgusting. Nobody ought to do this to anybody,” she mentioned.
In a 2013 textual content message, she wrote to Combs: “Please delete any video out of your iPhone if in case you have. Too many ppl have entry to your stuff.”
Combs instructed her that he had deleted them however there have been instances of their relationship that she mentioned she noticed the movies he claimed to have deleted.
When Johnson requested Ventura if she ever tried to battle again when Combs picked a battle together with her, she mentioned she tried earlier of their relationship however discovered “it may escalate the battle extra, make it worse for myself.”
Ventura testified that she had an “off-and-on” dependancy to opiates. She mentioned she took them to return down off social gathering medication, together with ecstasy, which she mentioned she’d use throughout freak-offs.
“Opiates made me really feel numb, which is why I relied on them so closely,” she instructed the court docket, including, “I didn’t need to really feel what was truly occurring in my thoughts, in my life, in actual time. It was simply an escape for me.”
She additionally testified that she had persistent urinary tract infections (UTIs) when she and Combs have been having freak-offs. She mentioned she would proceed to participate within the freak-offs regardless of the infections, calling the ache “horrible.”
In one other textual content message between Ventura and Combs, she instructed him that she had sores on her tongue. Ventura instructed the court docket that she thought the sores have been from taking medication and performing oral intercourse in the course of the freak-offs.
Combs responded to Ventura, writing, “I’m sorry.”
After freak-offs, Ventura mentioned, she felt emotionally “simply actually empty and I felt gross.” She additionally mentioned she “felt like I did my job.”
Ventura mentioned that Combs would “put his arms on me” throughout freak-offs with different male escorts.
“He would seize me up. Push me down. Hit me within the facet of the pinnacle. Kick me. You title it,” Ventura mentioned.
On one event in 2013, whereas packing to go to Drake’s OVO music competition in Toronto, Ventura mentioned Combs “attacked” her mates and threw her right into a mattress body.
She mentioned when Combs went to assault her, her mates “jumped on his again.”
Enterprise mentioned she suffered a “fairly vital gash” above her left eye, and Combs’ safety introduced her to a plastic surgeon in Beverly Hills to get the wound stitched up.
She texted Combs a photograph of her damage after and wrote: “So you possibly can bear in mind.”
“You don’t know when to cease. You pushed it too far. And continued to push. Unhappy,” Combs replied.
Ventura mentioned that she has a everlasting scar on her eyebrow from the 2013 altercation.
She additionally spoke about attending the Cannes Movie Competition in 2013 and revealed that Combs had kicked her off the yacht they have been staying on after getting right into a battle.
Combs accused Ventura of taking medication from him and made her depart the boat with out footwear, her passport and different belongings.
She mentioned she ended up staying at a resort the place Combs’ workers have been staying.
She testified that after they have been on a airplane coming back from the competition, Combs pulled up freak-off movies on his laptop computer and instructed her that he was going to “embarrass” her “and launch them.”
“I simply felt trapped,” she instructed the court docket.
After the airplane landed in New York, she mentioned, Combs mentioned he needed to have a freak-off.
“At that time, no matter was going to make him not be offended at me and threatening me, I used to be prepared to do,” she mentioned. “I simply didn’t need to really feel scared anymore. It was the one factor he made me really feel like I used to be good at.”
Ventura learn a textual content message she despatched to Combs in 2017, during which she wrote that “nothing good” comes out of the freak-offs.
“You deal with me such as you’re Ike Turner,” she wrote, referring to Tina Turner’s former husband, who was bodily abusive in the direction of the singer.
What he’s on trial for
U.S. prosecutors allege that for 20 years, behind the scenes, Combs was coercing and abusing girls with assist from a community of associates who helped silence victims by blackmail and violence.
Combs faces an indictment that features descriptions of freak-offs, that are outlined within the court docket doc as “elaborate and produced intercourse performances that Combs organized, directed, masturbated throughout, and infrequently electronically recorded.”
Quite a few witnesses have come ahead to accuse Combs of terrorizing individuals into silence by choking, hitting, kicking and dragging them, in line with prosecutors. One indictment alleges that Combs dangled somebody from a balcony.
Though dozens of women and men have alleged in lawsuits that Combs abused them, this trial will spotlight the claims of 4 girls.
Combs is charged with intercourse trafficking, racketeering conspiracy and transportation to have interaction in prostitution. He has denied all the fees in opposition to him and has rejected a plea deal, selecting to go to trial as a substitute.
If discovered responsible within the New York court docket, he may face life in jail.
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International Information will probably be overlaying the Diddy trial in its entirety. Please examine again for updates.
— With recordsdata from International Information’ Michelle Butterfield and The Related Press
