Casandra “Cassie” Ventura returned for her second day of testimony in Sean Combs’ criminal trial Wednesday, opening with details of her ex-boyfriend’s 2016 physical assault at the InterContinental hotel captured on surveillance video. The testimony follows Ventura’s first day on the stand Tuesday, in which she painted an extremely graphic picture of the “humiliating” sexual acts she said she endured to avoid Combs’ violence and sustain the hip-hop mogul’s love.
Jurors once again were shown the surveillance footage before Ventura read aloud a series of text messages Combs sent to her following the attack, per media reports. These include multiple requests to call him alongside, “I got six kids,” “Yo pls call Im surrounded,” and “For my kids help.” Ventura texted Combs that she had spoken to security and “as long as you don’t disturb the guests they’ll leave you be.”
She went on testify that Combs had given her a fat lip and a black eye as a result of the attack. “You are sick for thinking it’s okay to do what you’ve done please stay far away from me,” she texted him, per media reports. She declined to give Combs’ name to the police, she said, because ”I didn’t want to hurt him that way. It was just too much going on.”
Ventura — who is considered the star witness in the Southern District of New York prosecutors’ case — walked into court on Wednesday wearing a grey turtleneck dress. It was the 38-year-old R&B singer’s November 2023 civil lawsuit against Combs that put a federal investigation into motion. In September, SDNY prosecutors charged Combs with the sex trafficking of two women between 2009 and 2024, racketeering conspiracy and transportation to engage in prostitution.
Combs, 55, has pleaded not guilty to the five felony charges against him. If convicted, he faces up to 15 years to life in prison.
On Tuesday, much of Ventura’s testimony involved setting the stage of how she found herself unable to say “no” to Combs, who became her label boss in 2006 when she signed with Bad Boy. She claimed that shortly after her 21st birthday in August 2007, Combs began to pursue her romantically, which she said felt “confusing” at first.
But Ventura said she quickly became “enamored” of Combs and by later that year — after a fake work trip to Miami where the pair first had sex and Ventura first knowingly took the party drug Molly — Ventura said they were in a relationship.
Within the first year of dating, Ventura claimed Combs “proposed to me this idea, this sexual encounter that he called voyeurism, where he would watch me be — have intercourse and sexual activity with a third party, specifically another man.”
She would come to know these sexual encounters as “freak-offs” and said over the course of their decade-long relationship, Combs demanded freak-offs almost weekly. “Plainly, 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,” Ventura testified.
Ventura briefly testified about the physical abuse she claimed began early on in their relationship and happened “too frequently.” “He would mash me in my head, knock me over, drag me, kick me, um, stomp me in the head, if I was down,” she said.
She also spoke about the alleged control Combs had over her life, including her living arrangements, her appearance, her music career, and filling her day with “busy work” when she was not with him.
However, much of the day was focused on the “humilating” and “disgusting” sexual acts that Combs allegedly directed her and male escorts to perform during the freak-offs. Ventura claimed that Combs “controlled” the highly choreographed sexual encounters, approving the male escorts that she said she was tasked with hiring and the outfits that she wore.
Ventura said she felt she couldn’t say “no” to Combs, fearing that something “bad” would happen. “His temper,” Ventura explained. “If that is something that he wanted, Sean wanted to happen, that’s what was going to happen. There wasn’t another way around it.”
She also expressed anxiety that if she refused Combs, the perpetual bachelor would discard her, finding another woman to have freak-offs with. She testified that her self-worth plummeted over the course of their relationship.
This story is developing
