NOTE: The next article comprises disturbing particulars and video footage. Please learn at your personal 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 priceless. Combs was captured on safety video violently assaulting Ventura in a lodge 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 prison 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 staff. She additionally recounted being crushed quite a few occasions by Combs when she did issues that displeased him — like smiling at him the fallacious method.
“You make the fallacious 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 staff.
Combs’ legal professionals have acknowledged the rapper may very well be violent however preserve 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 lodge 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 keep in mind it hitting the wall. He was yelling at me and threw it at me,” she mentioned.
Ventura mentioned that as she was attempting to depart the lodge, Combs advised her “that I wasn’t going to depart him there. That I couldn’t.”
The prosecution confirmed two pictures of Ventura following the lodge assault and textual content messages between the previous couple.
Ventura mentioned that she took selfies on her Uber trip away from the lodge. 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 largest 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 advised her if she didn’t reply his cellphone 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 shield Sean?” Johnson requested.
“Yeah, after all,” Enterprise replied. “In that second, I didn’t need to harm him that method. I wasn’t prepared.”
Ventura mentioned that after the assault, Combs confirmed as much as her residence and he or she heard “chaos outdoors of the door” together with “banging, kicking, yelling.”
She mentioned that she went to the house of considered one of 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 befell two days after the lodge 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 pictures 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 keep in mind.”
“I gained’t deliver up once more till you’re in that temper,” he wrote.
Ventura advised the court docket ketamine was her most popular drug through the freak-offs as a result of “it was very dissociative.”
She then mentioned how movies of the freak-offs have been changed into “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 might spoil all the things 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 when you have. Too many ppl have entry to your stuff.”
Combs advised her that he had deleted them however there have been occasions of their relationship that she mentioned she noticed the movies he claimed to have deleted.
When Johnson requested Ventura if she ever tried to struggle again when Combs picked a struggle together with her, she mentioned she tried earlier of their relationship however realized “it might escalate the struggle 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 occasion 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 advised the court docket, including, “I didn’t need to really feel what was truly happening 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 advised him that she had sores on her tongue. Ventura advised the court docket that she thought the sores have been from taking medication and performing oral intercourse through 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 fingers 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 identify it,” Ventura mentioned.
On one event in 2013, whereas packing to go to Drake’s OVO music pageant in Toronto, Ventura mentioned Combs “attacked” her associates and threw her right into a mattress body.
She mentioned when Combs went to assault her, her associates “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 harm after and wrote: “So you may keep 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 Pageant in 2013 and revealed that Combs had kicked her off the yacht they have been staying on after getting right into a struggle.
Combs accused Ventura of taking medication from him and made her go away the boat with out footwear, her passport and different belongings.
She mentioned she ended up staying at a lodge the place Combs’ workers have been staying.
She testified that after they have been on a aircraft getting back from the pageant, Combs pulled up freak-off movies on his laptop computer and advised her that he was going to “embarrass” her “and launch them.”
“I simply felt trapped,” she advised the court docket.
After the aircraft 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 keen 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, wherein 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 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 ladies with assist from a community of associates who helped silence victims via 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, based on 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 ladies.
Combs is charged with intercourse trafficking, racketeering conspiracy and transportation to interact in prostitution. He has denied all the fees in opposition to him and has rejected a plea deal, selecting to go to trial as an alternative.
If discovered responsible within the New York court docket, he might face life in jail.
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World Information shall be masking the Diddy trial in its entirety. Please test again for updates.
— With recordsdata from World Information’ Michelle Butterfield and The Related Press
