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MANHATTAN (CN) — Reading the sexual abuse and psychological control described in Cassie Ventura’s bombshell lawsuit against Sean “Diddy” Combs “felt like a nightmare,” one of his ex-girlfriends testified Monday.
“I just remember that these pages just resembled my own experiences,” the woman testifying under the pseudonym “Jane” said on Monday, her third day of direct questioning by prosecutors in Manhattan federal court.
Three pages of Ventura’s 35-page civil complaint were particularly “harrowing,” she testified.
Asked what her immediate reaction to the lawsuit was, Jane told prosecutors: “I almost fainted, in fact, I think I did.”
“I was just bewildered, I was just in shock,” she said. “I just couldn’t sleep. I was reading these pages, and it just felt like a nightmare.”
Jane, who was one of Combs’ fly-in girlfriends from 2021 until his September 2024 arrest, read aloud text messages she sent to Combs in November 2023 after Ventura’s suit was made public and she had read the civil complaint.
“I feel like I’m reading my own sexual trauma,” she messaged Combs about Ventura’s quickly settled lawsuit. “You knew this was coming, and you gaslit and made me feel crazy about the sex trauma,” she fumed at him in the text exchange.
In a recorded phone call with Combs, Jane said the allegations in Cassie’s lawsuit were “word-for-word” her own experience of being coerced into the same prolonged sexual performance to satisfy Combs’ fantasies.
“It just feels sick,” Jane told Combs on the recording of the phone call. “Who’s there for me when I close my eyes and I have these fucked up things in my head?”
“Anything we did, we did mutually together,” Combs told her on the call.
In a second recorded phone call, Combs pleaded with Jane, “I need your friendship…you know ain’t gotta worry about nothing else.”
His reassurance was in reference to him paying her $10,000 for Los Angeles apartment rent, she testified.
A month earlier, before Cassie’s lawsuit was made public, Jane messaged Combs expressing that the “hotel nights were ‘desensitizing sex” for her, and she needed a break from the exhaustion of the drug-fueled, durational sexual performances.
“I’m not an animal, I’m not a porn star,” she wrote to Combs on October 16, 2023.
“I don’t feel like performing loveless, cold sex,” she testified on Friday. “I said I need a break, I don’t want to do anything, I’ve hit a wall…I said it’s been three years of me having to fuck strangers, I’m tired.”
Combs settled Ventura’s civil suit for an undisclosed amount the day after it was filed. Ventura revealed during the first week of trial that Combs paid $20 million to settle the lawsuit, which was brought under New York’s Adult Survivors Act.
Earlier on Monday, Jane testified she had felt “obligated” to have sex with other men in hotel rooms while Combs watched, since April of 2023, when he started paying her rent.
“Because I felt like he had made such a big purchase and I felt that this was something I had to do in return to make him feel OK about that,” she said.
Jane described her disappointment in an apparent bait-and-switch September 2023 after Combs flew her to New York City on the promise of a “proper” romantic getaway with dinners and shopping.
She testified she wanted to spend quality time with Combs, who did their recurring sexual escapades with hired escorts, but once she got on her flight, Combs texted her about arranging a “hotel night.”
“I just remember just taking a deep breath and just feeling upset and a little disappointed, a little defeated,” she said.
In responding to his messages, she tried to “brush away” his questions about a “hotel night,” she testified, proposing they could get dinner or drinks at Casa Cipriani or Zero Bond - both private clubs in Manhattan - when she got into town.
“Ok, I have a surprise if that’s okay, just one,” Combs responded, and later sent a link to the profile to a new “entertainer” from the professional escort service Cowboys4Angels.
“How did you feel when you read that?” Assistant U.S. Attorney Maurene Comey asked her.
“I hated it,” she replied.
Once she arrived in New York City, Combs took her to a late-night hotel lounge, she said.
“We bickered a bit, and I was kind of showing discomfort about these nights and how it’s just being sprung on me,” Jane testified. She said Combs’ demeanor was “defensive.”
On the car ride back to the Trump Hotel, she took an ecstasy pill that Combs handed her, she said.
At the hotel, she resumed the “hotel night” routine – lingerie, stripper heels, robe – and had sex with the unfamiliar escort in front of Combs, and then also had sex again with another, better acquainted escort flown in from Atlanta, she testified.
Combs, 55, is standing trial on a five-count indictment charging him with racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking and transportation to engage in prostitution. If convicted on all charges, he faces a minimum sentence of 15 years in prison and a maximum sentence of life. He has pleaded not guilty.
The 12-person jury is composed of eight men and four women. There are six alternates: four women and two men.
The trial, now in its fifth week, is expected to run up to eight weeks into early July.
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