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The second woman allegedly sex trafficked by Sean Combs took the witness stand at the hip-hop mogul’s criminal trial Thursday, just months after she first started speaking with prosecutors but more than a year after she purportedly told Combs that reading Casandra “Cassie” Ventura’s graphic lawsuit was like reading her own “sexual trauma.”
The woman, testifying under the pseudonym Jane, is listed as Victim-2 in the Southern District of New York’s sex trafficking and racketeering case against Combs. Prosecutors have kept much of Jane’s story under wraps, but they allege Combs fed her drugs and coerced her into highly choreographed “freak-offs” with male escorts between 2021 and 2024.
Prosecutors say Combs used manipulation, threats and physical violence to get what he wanted from Jane, busting down doors, dragging Jane, by her hair and kicking Jane while she was curled up in a ball on the ground. (Ventura previously testified that Combs coerced her into hundreds of freak-offs during their 11-year relationship that ended for good in 2018.)
Prosecutors have indicated they only began speaking to Jane in January, after they uncovered text messages she sent Combs in the days after Ventura’s lawsuit was first filed in November 2023. “It makes me sick how three solid pages, word for word, is exactly my experiences and my anguish,” she texted Combs. After Combs allegedly fed Jane a “false narrative” and made a vague reference to supporting her financially, Jane continued dating Combs into 2024, prosecutors said.
In her opening statement, Assistant U.S. Attorney Emily Johnson told jurors they would hear recordings of phone calls in which Combs called Jane after Ventura filed her lawsuit. “You will hear him try to manipulate Jane into saying she wanted to have freak-offs. You will hear him interrupt Jane when she pushes back,” Johnson said.
Johnson described Jane as a single mom who started spending time with Combs in 2020 and “fell in love with him quickly.” Johnson said Jane was not seeing other men, but Combs was dating other women and kept his relationship with Jane out of the public eye. Johnson said Combs lured Jane into her first freak-off with little warning or notice. The two already had taken drugs together and been intimate, and Jane complied with the surprise request in an effort to please Combs, Johnson said. Within a matter of hours, Jane found herself in a hotel room, having sex with a stranger while Combs directed her step by step, Johnson told the jury.
“The defendant continued asking Jane to have freak-offs and promising that if she did, they would spend quality time together, they would go on dates together, they would go on trips,” Johnson said on the first day of Combs’ trial last month. “That was what Jane wanted more than anything, a real relationship … But even though the defendant promised her quality time and trips, he never delivered. Those were just lies he told her to get more nights in dark hotel rooms with escorts.”
According to prosecutors, Combs took steps to control Jane financially, discouraging her from working so that she could be available to him on a moment’s notice. Although Jane repeatedly told Combs that she didn’t like “freak-offs” and only wanted to be alone with him, Combs dismissed the request. He also allegedly ignored Jane’s pleas for the male escorts to wear condoms.
Combs is accused of threatening to release explicit videos of Jane, supplying her with narcotics to keep her awake and compliant, and using physical violence to trap Jane in his abusive dynamic. During one purported incident, Combs allegedly kicked down four of Jane’s doors and lifted her off the ground in a chokehold. Later that night, Combs allegedly beat Jane again, punching her in the face, kicking her on the ground, and dragging her by her hair before forcing her to have a freak-off.
“You’re not going to fuck up my night,” Combs allegedly told Jane, according to the government’s opening statement.
When Ventura filed her stunning complaint and Jane worked up the courage to confront Combs, the Bad Boy Records founder allegedly tried to feed her a “false narrative” over the phone, prosecutors allege. Combs attempted to convince her “that she had willingly engaged in sex acts with him,” prosecutors said at Combs’ bail hearing last September. “In this call, the defendant ensures the victim that if she continues to be on his side and provide support and friendship, that she doesn’t have to worry about anything else, which is just a thinly-veiled reference to continuing that financial support,” a prosecutor told the court.
In the defense’s dueling opening statement, Combs’ lawyer, Teny Geragos, sought to set Jane apart from Ventura. She told jurors that by the time Combs started seeing Jane, “he was more upfront about his dating life,” including the fact that he was dating multiple women. She said Jane also was older and more mature than Ventura, “living her own life in a different state raising her child.”
Geragos said that after Jane’s first experience with a freak-off, “she began to do everything possible to make these nights incredible for Combs.” Geragos suggested Jane “made the choice” to engage in freak-offs “out of love.”
“She was desperate to spend time with him, to be with him, and ultimately, to give him something none of the other girlfriends that he was dating at the time were giving him. She will tell you that she tried many times to change the tenor of the relationship from one of a purely sexual nature to something maybe deeper or more meaningful,” Geragos said. She blamed the alleged violence in the couple’s “toxic and dysfunctional” relationship on Jane’s “jealousy.”
In her opening, Geragos said Combs was interested in a “swingers lifestyle,” which she described as a predilection for consensual “threesomes by adults.” She told jurors it was not their job “to judge him for his sexual preferences.” She said the government had the burden to prove Combs coerced the women, and that the evidence would show the women willingly stayed with Combs out of love and because he was a “wealthy rapper” who gave them generous financial support.
Geragos acknowledged that Combs was violent in the video showing him kicking and dragging Ventura in a hotel hallway in 2016, but she said “domestic violence is not sex trafficking.”
Jane’s time on the stand is expected to stretch well into next week. More than two dozen witnesses already have testified at Combs’ trial, which is now in its fourth week. Prosecutors have called multiple former assistants, alleged male escorts, and even Scott Mescudi, the musician and actor known as Kid Cudi, to support their allegations Combs used his wealth, influence, and inner circle to carry out crimes aimed at fulfilling his sexual desires and protecting his reputation.
