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Casandra “Cassie” Ventura took the stand for her second day of testimony in Sean Combs’ legal trial, throughout which she shared particulars of ex-boyfriend’s 2016 physical assault at the InterContinental hotel, which was captured on surveillance video; Combs’ response to her transient relationship with Child Cudi; and a 2018 rape allegation.
The testimony follows Ventura’s first day on the stand Tuesday (Could 13), throughout which she painted an especially graphic image of the “humiliating” sexual acts she stated she endured to keep away from Combs’ violence and maintain the hip-hop mogul’s love.
Early within the day, jurors as soon as once more had been proven the surveillance footage of the 2016 assault earlier than Ventura learn aloud a collection of textual content messages Combs despatched her afterward. These included a number of requests to name him and claiming police had been about to arrest him, in addition to: “I acquired six children,” “Yo pls name Im surrounded,” and “For my children assist.” Ventura texted Combs that she had spoken to safety and “so long as you don’t disturb the visitors they’ll depart you be.”
She went on to testify that Combs had given her a fats lip and a black eye because of the assault. “You’re sick for considering it’s okay to do what you’ve performed please keep far-off from me,” she texted him. She declined to provide Combs’ identify to the police, she stated, as a result of, ”I didn’t wish to damage him that approach. [It was] simply an excessive amount of happening.”
Ventura — who is taken into account the star witness within the Southern District of New York prosecutors’ case — walked into court docket Wednesday sporting a grey turtleneck costume. It was the 38-year-old R&B singer’s November 2023 civil lawsuit in opposition to Combs that put a federal investigation into movement. Ventura revealed throughout her testimony that Combs settled the case for $20 million.
Ventura stated she selected to return ahead as a result of she was uninterested in the “disgrace, the guilt” that stemmed from her relationship with Combs. “He introduced the idea [of freak-offs] to me once I was 22, ” Ventura testified via tears. “I might do completely something for him and I did. And it by no means stopped.”
In September, SDNY prosecutors charged Combs with the intercourse trafficking of two girls between 2009 and 2024, racketeering conspiracy, and transportation to have interaction in prostitution. Combs, 55, has pleaded not responsible to the 5 felony expenses in opposition to him. If convicted, he faces as much as 15 years to life in jail.
Close to the top of the day, Ventura alleged that Combs raped her in 2018. On the time, their relationship was ending, and Ventura had already begun seeing her now-husband, Alex Positive. She stated she and Combs went to dinner in Malibu and had what she thought was a “closure dialog,” describing the temper as playful and romantic. However upon Combs driving her residence after which “raped me in my lounge,” she testified.
“I simply keep in mind crying and saying ‘no,’ however it was very quick,” she stated. Ventura added that she wasn’t even positive Combs seen her crying. (Per a earlier ruling, Positive, who has in any other case been in attendance all through Ventura’s time on the stand, was barred from listening to her testimony in regards to the alleged rape as a result of Combs’ protection stated they could name him as a witness.)
Ventura went on to say she had intercourse with Combs yet another time after their breakup, although this time “by alternative.” Of that call she famous their decade collectively and stated, “You don’t simply flip emotions off that approach. I nonetheless had a great imaginative and prescient of who he was as an individual.”
However the long-term results of their relationship lingered, she stated. Ventura broke down as she mentioned her choice to enter rehab and a trauma remedy program in 2023. “I used to be spinning out,” she stated. “I didn’t wish to be alive anymore at that time.”
Ventura recalled having flashbacks throughout a music video shoot, and when she returned residence, she informed Positive, “You are able to do this with out me. You don’t want me anymore.” She added, “I couldn’t take the ache that I used to be in anymore, and so I simply tried to stroll out the entrance door into visitors and my husband wouldn’t let me.”
Round this time, Ventura stated she entered rehab the place she first started “placing every thing on paper for the primary time in order that I might actually perceive what I had been via over a few years.” She described her remedy for coming off Valium as being extra of a “trauma remedy.”
Afterwards, Ventura stated she took all of her writing and long-established it right into a guide, wanting Combs to learn it. “I simply wished him to grasp,” she stated. “I don’t assume, in spite of everything these years of begging for, like, sorries, and only for him to really acknowledge the ache, the ache that he put me via.”
Ventura stated she additionally wished compensation from Combs “for the time, the ache, and like the various, a few years of making an attempt to have to repair my life.” Ventura stated she randomly landed on $30 million, selecting a quantity that will “alert” him. However Combs by no means paid for the rights to the guide. As a substitute, Ventura stated he ended up paying a $20 million settlement to her when she filed her intercourse trafficking lawsuit.
All through her testimony Wednesday, Ventura shared many alleged situations of bodily violence, together with throughout “freak-offs” — the prolonged, drug-fueled sexual encounters Combs allegedly orchestrated with Ventura and male intercourse employees. Ventura stated she was injured throughout freak-offs, typically with an escort nonetheless within the room, when Combs “put fingers on [her].” She added that these alleged incidents occurred “too often.”
Ventura additionally detailed a 2013 incident the place she stated Combs got here to her condominium and began berating her for sleeping when she ought to have been packing for an upcoming journey. Ventura stated two of her mates, who had been there on the time, jumped on Combs’ again “as a result of he was making an attempt to assault me.”
At one level in the course of the scuffle, Ventura stated Combs threw her down. “I damage my eyebrow on the nook of my mattress,” she stated, including that she was left with a “fairly important gash on the aspect of my eyebrow.”
Later that day, Ventura stated, one in every of Combs’ safety guards took her to a plastic surgeon to suture the wound. She stated she took a photograph and texted Combs, “So you may keep in mind.” On the witness stand, Ventura pointed to her eyebrow and stated she nonetheless has a scar from the incident, which she covers with make-up. Prosecutors confirmed the jury a photograph of Ventura with the eyebrow damage.
Throughout her second day of testimony, prosecutors once more questioned Ventura at size in regards to the freak-offs, specializing in the bodily toll they took. Ventura learn textual content messages she despatched Combs about sores on her tongue, which she attributed to performing oral intercourse and taking medicine. She additionally stated she often suffered from urinary tract infections, but would proceed to carry out in the course of the freak-offs regardless of “horrible” ache.
After the freak-offs, Ventura continued, she and Combs would recuperate with massages and IV fluids, but in addition opiates, which Combs allegedly offered at instances. Ventura stated she developed an “off-and-on” opiate habit, including, “Opiates made me really feel numb, which is why I relied on them so closely… I didn’t wish to really feel what was truly happening in my thoughts, in my life, in actual time. It was simply an escape for me.”
Ventura additionally testified in regards to the movies Combs allegedly manufactured from the freak-offs, which she stated had been became “blackmail supplies.” She stated Combs often introduced up the movies when he was offended together with her, and threatened to launch them as a technique to preserve her in-line.
One such occasion, Ventura stated, was when she began relationship Child Cudi (actual identify Scott Mescudi) in 2011. She testified, per stories, that Combs threatened to launch freak-off movies after studying about their relationship. And he or she claimed that Combs threatened to “damage” her and Mescudi, with Combs allegedly saying he can be in a foreign country when it occurred.
Ventura additionally claimed that Combs mentioned blowing up Mescudi’s automobile, and claimed Combs stated he wished Mescudi’s mates to see the explosion. In 2012, a Porsche owned by Mescudi was set on hearth by an “incendiary gadget,” as a contemporaneous police report put it.
Ventura testified that, after she ended her relationship with Mescudi, she subsequent noticed him at SoHo Home, with Combs additionally current. Ventura testified that Mescudi requested Combs, “What about my car?” To which Combs allegedly replied, “What car?” Ventura stated “that was the top of the assembly.”
One other alleged incident occurred throughout a visit to the Cannes Movie Competition, the place Ventura stated Combs accused her of stealing medicine from him, then kicked her off of his boat. On the flight again residence, Ventura stated, she tried to keep away from Combs, however he ultimately traded for a seat subsequent to her, and began taking part in movies of freak-offs that Ventura thought she had deleted. She stated Combs informed her “he was going to embarrass me and launch them.”
Ventura stated she “felt trapped,” and once they landed, Combs wished 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 prepared to do,” she stated. “I simply didn’t wish to really feel scared anymore. It was the one factor he made me really feel like I used to be good at.”
She testified that at one level, she texted Combs that “nothing good” got here out of the freak-offs. “You deal with me such as you’re Ike Turner,” she texted.
A lot of Ventura’s testimony throughout her first day on the stand centered on how she got here to search out herself unable to say “no” to Combs. He grew to become her label boss in 2006 when she signed with Unhealthy Boy, and shortly after her twenty first birthday in August 2007, Combs started to pursue her romantically.
She stated these overtures had been “complicated” at first, however Ventura stated she rapidly grew to become “enamored” of Combs, and by later that yr — after a pretend work journey to Miami the place the pair first had intercourse and Ventura first knowingly took the social gathering drug Molly — Ventura stated they had been in a relationship.
Inside the first yr of relationship, Ventura claimed Combs “proposed to me this concept, this sexual encounter that he referred to as voyeurism, the place he would watch me be — have intercourse and sexual exercise with a 3rd social gathering, particularly one other man.”
She would come to know these sexual encounters as freak-offs and stated over the course of their decade-long relationship, Combs demanded freak-offs nearly weekly. “Plainly, the freak-offs grew to become a job the place there was no house to do the rest however to recuperate and simply attempt to really feel regular once more,” Ventura testified.
Ventura briefly testified in regards to the bodily abuse she claimed started early on of their relationship and occurred “too often.” “He would mash me in my head, knock me over, drag me, kick me, um, stomp me within the head, if I used to be down,” she stated.
She additionally spoke in regards to the alleged management Combs had over her life, together with her residing preparations, her look, and her music profession. Ventura additionally stated Combs crammed her day with “busy work” when she was not with him.
Nevertheless, a lot of the day was targeted on the “humiliating” and “disgusting” sexual acts that Combs allegedly directed her and male escorts to carry out in the course of the freak-offs. Ventura claimed that Combs “managed” the extremely choreographed sexual encounters, approving the male escorts (that Ventura stated she was tasked with hiring), in addition to the outfits she wore.
Ventura stated she felt she couldn’t say “no” to Combs, fearing that one thing “dangerous” would occur. “His mood,” Ventura defined. “If that’s one thing that he wished, Sean wished to occur, that’s what was going to occur. There wasn’t one other approach round it.”
She additionally expressed nervousness that if she refused Combs, the perpetual bachelor would discard her, discovering one other lady to have freak-offs with. She testified that her self-worth plummeted over the course of their relationship.
This story was up to date at Wednesday, Could 14 at 8:35 p.m. to incorporate particulars about Sean Combs’ November 2023 civil settlement with Casandra Ventura, and why she determined to return ahead.
From Rolling Stone US.