Singer says on day three of trial Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs routinely beat her and threatened to ruin her career with videos of sexual encounters.
Casandra Ventura, the singer popularly known as Cassie and former girlfriend of rap mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs, has taken to the witness stand on the third day of his trial to portray a relationship defined by physical abuse and routine humiliation.
Testifying before the court on Wednesday, Ventura said Combs, who faces sex trafficking and racketeering charges, beat her and threatened to release compromising videos that could damage her career.
“He would grab me up, push me down, hit me in the side of the head, kick me,” Ventura, a rhythm and blues singer, told jurors in Manhattan federal court.
“It would just make him more violent, make him stronger, make him want to push me harder,” Ventura said of efforts to resist Combs’s violent behaviour during their decadelong relationship.
Prosecutors have alleged that Combs used his wealth and control of an entertainment empire to manipulate and coerce women, sometimes through physical violence, into participation in drug-fuelled sex parties known as “freak-offs” and then used videos of sexual encounters as blackmail.
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“He said that it would ruin everything that I had worked for, that it would make me look like a slut, that I would be shamed,” Ventura said. “Nobody should do that to anyone.”
She stated participation in the “freak-offs” started to feel like “a job where there was no space to do anything else but to recover and just try to feel normal again” and she developed an opioid addiction to cope.
On one occasion in 2013, Ventura sent Combs pictures of injuries she sustained when he threw her into a bed frame so he could “remember” what he had done.
“You don’t know when to stop. You pushed it too far and continued to push,” he responded. “Sad.”
Combs’s lawyers have conceded that the rapper has an aggressive temperament and has physically assaulted people but state he has been incorrectly charged with racketeering and sex trafficking and a freewheeling sexual lifestyle is being misconstrued by prosecutors.
Combs has pleaded not guilty to five counts of racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking and transportation to engage in prostitution. If he is convicted on all charges, he faces a mandatory minimum sentence of 15 years in prison.