In red carpets from Los Angeles to the French Riviera, Sean “Diddy” combs and R&B Cassie singer was intertwined with the arms, radiating an attractive and carefree facade for the cameras.
But behind closed, he said, “she felt trapped.”
In the first week of testimony at the Federal Trial of Sex Traffic in ComBs in New York, Cassie, whose real name is Casandra Ventura, described for four days in the witness, a tumultuous relationship with the musical entrepreneur who began at age 20 and lasted for more than a decade. As a Government’s star witness, their responses gave a window to a world focused on the sexual meetings paid last days and sometimes they occurred weekly, known as “strangers”, which said she was forced to endure under the threat of physical and psychological abuse.
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The “fans” were so regular, he said, “they became a job.”
Much of what Ventura, 38, testified was graphic, from sexual acts with male escorts to violence, including fights with combs that left her covered with bruises, he said, if he tried to reject a “monster.” A visibly pregnant ventura also reported how, she said, Comong raped her on her living room in 2018, which he has denied.
But as explicit as the interrogation line was from the Prosecutor’s Office, it was necessary, some legal experts say, because it helped to lay the foundations in the case of the federal government in the coming weeks. Ultimately, 12 jury members must decide whether combs, 55, violated federal laws against extortion conspiracy, sexual trafficking and transport to participate in prostitution. He has vehemently denied the five charges against him, but he is guilty of even one, he could face a long prison sentence.
Rachel Maimin, former federal prosecutor of the Southern District of New York, said that crucial evidence, the security video of a 2016 assault in a hall of the Los Angeles hotel in which the combs, with only a white towel, could be seen beating and dragging Ventura, will stay in the minds of the jurors. At the premiere, Ventura explained that the incident was the result that she tried to leave a “monster”, which sometimes happened in hotel suites worldwide.
Ventura “could really tell a story from beginning to end,” said Maimin. “He was able to enter some of the most annoying and disturbing pieces of the case, including the video when Com Coms is hitting it. The stage is prepared for the rest of the case, where the Prosecutor’s Office will have to support its testimony with all its evidence.”
Ventura said it was under the direction of combs that would use drugs and have sex with male escorts, some found in Craigslist and paid for more than $ 6,000. Meanwhile, he said, combs’s security was constantly to provide supplies, including medications, condoms and baby oil.
He said that hanging on his relationship was the fear that ComBs could blackmail it with recorded videos of sexual acts.
He panicked, he said, when he organized an event in Atlantic City, New Jersey, in 2014 and “someone he was working with, he said he saw a sexually explicit video of me.” He quickly sent a text message to the combs and told the jury that any filtered footage “would put my career in danger” and “could ruin everything I worked.”
A year earlier, said Ventura, she was mortified when she saw Peines watching sexually explicit videos of her while flying home on a commercial flight after having attended the Cannes Film Festival in France.
“Videos of ‘Freak Off’ stopped on his laptop that I thought they were eliminated,” Ventura testified. “I was showing them with other people. I said: ‘You’re shameing me.’ I was scared.
But to avoid her anger, she said, she organized a “monster” within a few hours of landing, otherwise, “he said that the videos would be released.”
Mitchell Epner, a former federal prosecutor of the New Jersey district who now practices criminal defense in New York, said that Ventura’s testimony has been key, because if the jurors consider her credible, she helps the case of the prosecution that alleges that sex trafficking occurred through “strength, fraud or coercion.”
“If it was forced by violence or threats of violence or blackmail materials to participate in the ‘strangers’ about their objections, then the trial is over,” said Epner. “Everything else, which will continue for weeks, will not matter if the jury accepts that she was a credible witness, and they believe beyond a reasonable doubt that I was telling the truth when he said he did not want to do these things, he knew that he did not want to do these things, and the only reason I did it was that he was afraid that he would defeat me or that he would free the videos.”
He added that the way in which the combs defense team painted him in his initial statements as a “very defective individual”, prone to violence and jealousy in his relationships, was surprising.
“It is one of the strangest trials we have seen because the prosecution and defense agree on many of the facts,” said Epner.
During the interrogation, the defense lawyer Anna Estevao got Ventura to talk about her love for combs. Text messages were demonstrated that suggest that he knew the agency had to get away from him after they fought.
Other messages also showed that it seemed to be a participant arranged in sexual meetings: “I’m always ready to scare,” he wrote in 2009.
“For the defense in the case, the code of the castle is to persuade the jury that everything done here was consensual,” said Mark Zauderer, a veteran trial and appeal lawyer in New York.
Ventura also told Estevao that he resolved his demand from 2023 in which he accused the combs of rape and abuse for $ 20 million, and initially his lawyer requested $ 30 million, since he had planned to write a book about his relationship with combs. (Combs did not admit having been badly in the solution of demand).
Zauderer said that jurors can see that the sum like Ventura has “claimed” after what he endured or “the defense is trying to launch it as it was only looking for money.”
Maimin, the former federal prosecutor, said he still wants to see how prosecutors will continue the testimony of Ventura to show how combs allegedly exercised his power and commercial activities, built around the records of bad children, which he founded in 1993, as a “criminal company.”
In their accusation, prosecutors say that combs “was based on employees, resources and the influence of the multifaceted commercial empire that directed and controlled, creating a criminal company whose members and associates participated and tried to participate, among other crimes, sexual trafficking, forced workers, kidnapping, Arabic, bibesto and obstruction of justice.”
“I don’t know if he took them there,” Maimin said about Ventura’s testimony.
“As a matter of law, it is enough to have the testimony of a witness,” said Maimin, “but given the complexity of the charges against him, including the extortion conspiracy part, it would be very difficult to say that he has demonstrated his case beyond a reasonable doubt without corroborating evidence.”
Neither the prosecution nor the defense have published lists of complete witnesses for the trial, which is expected to last for at least eight weeks.
Dawn Richard, former member of the Danity Kane Girls group, founded by combs, took the stand briefly on Friday night as the next witness of the Prosecutor’s Office and is expected to continue testifying on Monday. Richard filed a lawsuit last year against the combs, claiming that he touched, assaulted and imprisoned, and that she also saw him beat Ventura.
A comb lawyer described the “manufactured” accusations and said Richard was looking for “a day of payment.”
Other witnesses of the Prosecutor’s Office in the next few days may include the mother of Ventura and a personal assistant of combs.
If you or someone you know faces domestic violence, call the national direct domestic violence line to obtain help at (800) 799-SAFE (7233), or go www.thehotline.org For more. States often also have direct lines of domestic violence.
