After spending two days giving explicit details of the alleged physical, emotional and sexual abuse that she endured during her decade-long relationship with Sean “Diddy” Combs, Casandra “Cassie” Ventura took the stand Thursday for the first day of the defense’s cross-examination.
The defense opened by asking Ventura if she was in love with Combs and showed emails and text messages between the couple. Ventura testified that in the early stages of their relationship, the pair exchanged many loving messages, per media reports. Ventura said Combs was “very sweet” and “attentive” in the beginning, per media reports. “His real personality — or at least what I thought was his real personality — came out and I liked who he was,” Ventura said.
The jury was also shown sexual messages between Ventura and Combs in the context of planning “freak-offs,” Combs’ name for drug-fueled sexual encounters that Ventura testified earlier this week could last up to four days. Combs’ lawyer, Anne Estavao, asked Ventura about which phone she preferred to have the freak-offs recorded on, prompting Ventura to reply, “I didn’t want them to be recorded at all,” per media reports.
The 38-year-old, who is eight months pregnant with her third child, had been poised and confident throughout her direct examination from Southern District of New York prosecutor Emily Johnson. Combs, 55, has pleaded not guilty to five counts of sex trafficking, racketeering conspiracy and transportation to engage in prostitution.
Combs’ all-star defense team, which includes celebrity lawyers Brian Steel and Marc Agnifilo, is expected to cross-examine Ventura well into Friday morning. On Thursday, co-lead counsel Teny Geragos told U.S. District Judge Arun Subramanian that prosecutors’ direct examination of Ventura went “much differently than I expected. So we are kind of changing our strategy.
Combs’ attorneys have already laid the groundwork for their defense, admitting there was domestic violence in the couple’s longtime relationship, but adamant that physical abuse did not equate to sex trafficking. Instead the two had a “toxic” dynamic, Geragos said in her opening statement. “Perhaps they did not always show love to one another the way you would with your partner, but they were in a relationship and she was not being trafficked.”
Ventura was a “capable adult” in a consenting relationship with Combs, Geragos added.
Over the course of Ventura’s testimony, she walked the jury through the rapid progression of their relationship from when she first met Combs as a 19-year-old to being introduced to the “concept” of a freak-off when she was 22. “It never stopped our whole relationship,” she said. “And it was expected of me and it made me feel horrible about myself.”
Ventura said Combs beat her physically throughout their relationship, including in front of male escorts, her friends and his employees. “He would grab me up, push me down, hit me in the side of the head, kick me,” Ventura testified, pictures of her injuries flashing on the screen. “You name it.”
The few times Ventura’s voice quivered and she began to cry was when she explained how she wanted Combs to “recognize the pain that he put me through” and the detrimental toll it took on her self-worth and mental health. “I was spinning out and I didn’t — I didn’t want to be alive anymore at that point,” Ventura said through tears speaking about her struggle with suicide ideation in 2023.
This is a developing story
