Diddy ex-girlfriend Cassie takes witness stand in sex trafficking trial

MANHATTAN (CN) ­— Cassie Ventura, the R&B singer and ex-girlfriend of Sean “Diddy” Combs, recalled her experiences of violent physical abuse and threats of sex tape blackmail during key witness testimony in Combs’ criminal trial on Tuesday morning.

“He would bash me on my head, knock me on my head, drag me, kick me, stomp me in the head if I was down,” Ventura testified early into the prosecution’s direct questioning on Tuesday.

Currently eight months pregnant, Ventura wore a chocolate brown, stretchy maternity dress on the witness stand.

The “Mo Money Mo Problems” rapper/producer is standing trial on a five-count indictment charging him with racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking and transportation to engage in prostitution.

Prosecutors have accused the Bad Boy Records CEO of conspiring with an inner circle entourage of assistants and bodyguards to manipulate multiple women into drug-fueled, voyeuristic sexual encounters — dubbed “freak offs” — that often involved male prostitutes performing sex acts on women while Combs watched.

During her testimony on Tuesday, Ventura testified that the looming threats of physical violence and damage to her reputation if sexually explicit videos featuring her during the “freak offs” were leaked ensured her continued participation in those sexual performances directed by Combs.

“At a certain point, I didn’t feel like I had much of a choice,” she said. “Didn’t know what ‘no’ could turn into.”

Now 38, Ventura described herself, then 22, as a “young, naïve, total people pleaser,” signed to a 10-album deal with Combs’ Bad Boy record label.

“Ultimately at the point, Sean controlled a lot of my life, whether it was career, the way I dressed, everything,” she said. “I just didn’t feel like I had much say in it.”

She testified Combs, 17 years her senior, called “all of the shots” in music career at that point.

Ventura said Combs introduced her in her early 20s to both oral sex and the drug MDMA, also known as ecstasy or molly.

She testified she used drugs at every “freak off” for the “dissociative and numbing” effects in order to have sex with strangers.

She wiped away tears on Tuesday afternoon as she explained how one aspect of the weekly “freak offs” she enjoyed was the “one-on-one time” with Combs, since those were the only times she managed to share alone with just him.

She recalled attempted to gently let Combs know she did not want to keep participating in the lurid pastime without causing him disappointment.

“I just wanted him to know that I never judged him for it, but I wanted him to know that doing this made me feel horrible, made me feel worthless, that I had nothing else to offer him,” she said.

During the direct testimony, Ventura recalled that a single “freak off” could typically exhaust up to 10 large bottles of Johnson & Johnson baby oil during the sex acts that Combs choreographed. She said those bottles of baby oil would be heated up in hotel sinks with warm water.

Combs directed the baby oil be reapplied every five minutes, she recalled, “You need to be glistening, you need to be shining,” she quoted Combs instructing.

“At first he was very specific that he wanted a black male with a large penis, but it later became whatever was available,” Ventura testified, explaining that the male escorts were initially recruited from Craigslist or Backpage, and then later hired from an escort service called Cowboys4Angels or other male stripper services.

The escorts were paid “anywhere from $1,500 to five or six thousand dollars,” she testified.

She recollected that the rooms for “freak offs” were lit by heavily scented candles, including both the consumer air freshener brand Glade and the luxury candle brand Diptyque.

Manhattan federal prosecutors have indicated they intend to show jurors videos and still images from the sexually explicit recordings of some of the “freak offs.”

Also central to the case is a March 2016 video showing Combs violently hitting and dragging Ventura on the floor of a hallway at the InterContinental Hotel in Los Angeles.

Prosecutors played the hotel surveillance footage during questioning of Ventura on Tuesday afternoon about the InterContinental incident.

She testified she had begrudgingly agreed to a “freak off” that weekend to appease Combs so that her first big movie premiere a couple days later “would run smoothly.”

“He would have it made it miserable for me,” she said.

At some point during the encounter in the hotel room, Combs hit her and gave her a black eye, causing her to flee while he was distracted in between “sessions.”

Her direct testimony will resume Wednesday morning.

Jurors were previously shown multiple video excerpts of the hotel incident on the first day of the trial.

Prosecutors say Combs and his chief of staff paid a $100,000 bribe in cash hotel security to bury surveillance footage of the violent incident.

Ten months before Combs was arrested, Ventura filed a bombshell civil lawsuit against him in November 2023 accusing him of rape and repeated physical abuse. They settled the next day for an undisclosed amount.

Represented by attorney Douglas Wigdor, Ventura accused Combs in her complaint of drawing her into an “ostentatious, fast-paced, and drug-fueled lifestyle” shortly after she met him and signed to his label in 2005, when she was 19 and he was 37.

Calling Combs a “volatile and abusive partner,” Ventura accused him in the complaint of allegedly blowing up rapper Kid Cudi’s car as an act of intimidation against a romantic rival.

Combs’ defense lawyers have countered that while there was domestic violence in Combs and Ventura’s long-term relationship, it stemmed from “infidelity and drug use” and “primal jealousy,” not from coercion, control and sex trafficking as federal prosecutors claim.

Combs, who has been held at a federal jail without bail since his September 2024 arrest in a New York City hotel, wore a light-colored sweater on top of a white collared shirt, with khaki pants.

His mother and grown children attended the trial on Tuesday, sitting together in the second row of the courtroom gallery.

The 12-person jury is composed of eight men and four women, while the six alternates are made up of four women and two men.

The trial is expected to run up to eight weeks into early July.

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