Cassie Ventura tells courtroom Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs blackmailed her with ‘freak-offs’: ‘I felt trapped’ | Sean ‘Diddy‘ Combs

Singer Casandra “Cassie” Ventura, a former girlfriend of Sean “Diddy” Combs and a key witness within the federal sex-trafficking and racketeering trial of the music mogul, returned to the witness stand in New York Metropolis on Wednesday morning, because the high-profile trial entered its third day.

Ventura, who’s eight and a half months pregnant, started her second day of testimony by revisiting the resort surveillance footage of her 2016 assault by Combs. She mentioned Combs was yelling at her after which threw a vase at her within the elevator foyer.

“I didn’t get hit. I bear in mind it hitting the wall. He was yelling at me and threw it at me,” Ventura mentioned, including that Combs advised her “that I wasn’t going to depart him there. That I couldn’t.”

The jury was then proven two photographs of Ventura, that she says she took of herself after the resort assault the place she is seen with a swollen lip. She mentioned she additionally had a black eye beneath her sun shades.

The jury was additionally proven textual content messages between Combs and Ventura after the assault, the place she advised him “you’re sick for considering it’s OK to do what you probably did to me” and advised him that she “had a black eye”.

Ventura was requested once more concerning the varied escorts she says she was compelled to rent, with Combs’s cash, to participate in more and more excessive sexual eventualities over marathon periods Combs known as “freak-offs” – she has named greater than a dozen since her testimony started on Tuesday.

“That was simply my job, actually. It was anticipated of me,” she mentioned. She advised the courtroom that if she mentioned no to a freak-off or advised Combs she didn’t wish to do it, “it might be an issue, we’d find yourself combating” including that violence was “at all times a priority if we weren’t agreeing on one thing”.

In a 2016 textual content message proven in courtroom, Combs is seen asking Ventura to have a “correct” freak-off with out the usage of ketamine. Combs claimed {that a} “profitable” freak-off was solely “after we bear in mind”, whereas Ventura famous that she most popular ketamine throughout “freak-offs” as a result of “it was very dissociative.”

Combs would usually threaten to launch the movies he had of Ventura collaborating within the freak-offs, she mentioned. She famous that on her birthday one yr, Combs reminded her of the movies he had in his possession after she refused to depart her mates to go together with him to a freak-off.

“I feared for my profession, my household … It’s horrible and disgusting, nobody ought to try this to anybody,” she mentioned. “It may break every little thing I labored for, make me appear like a slut … I wasn’t imagined to be on these movies. I didn’t wish to be in them.”

“I felt trapped,” she advised the courtroom. “No matter was going to not make him offended or threaten me I used to be going to do.”

Ventura testified that she would ask Combs to delete movies of freak-offs that had been on his telephone and that he would inform her he did. She would later see the movies nonetheless on his telephone.

Ventura mentioned she skilled persistent urinary tract infections as a result of fixed freak-offs. however was nonetheless compelled to participate even when the ache was “horrible”.

After such periods, Ventura mentioned that she felt “empty” emotionally and “gross”. Generally, she mentioned she would go away freak-offs if she felt “unsafe”, however would usually return to the resort room as a result of Combs or one among his staff would discover her and produce her again.

Throughout some freak-offs Combs would “hit me on the facet of the top” and kick Ventura, which she mentioned would immediate escorts – who may hear the violence occurring – to ask her afterward if she was OK.

On Combs’s violence exterior the freak-offs, Ventura mentioned there was an occasion in 2013 when she was in her residence and Combs tried to assault her. Her two mates, who had been within the residence on the time, “jumped on his again” to guard her. Combs was nonetheless in a position to throw Ventura down, slicing her eyebrow on the nook of her mattress.

Combs took her to a plastic surgeon’s workplace in Beverly Hills to repair the lower; Ventura later texted him a photograph of the wound “so you’ll be able to bear in mind”.

Ventura advised the courtroom that generally she fought again in opposition to Combs, however that combating again would result in “escalating” the combat, which generally made “him extra violent”. A number of staff of Combs noticed him abusing her through the years, she mentioned, together with members of his safety group, administration and assistants. Ventura even famous that one assistant advised her that they give up due to how Combs handled her.

She additionally mentioned Combs, who’s 17 years her senior and first met her when she was 19, would usually present up unannounced to her residence.

On Wednesday afternoon, Ventura mentioned that Combs was violent with others in addition to her, one thing the jury can count on to listen to extra about from later witnesses for the prosecution. She advised the courtroom that he would assault a few of his staff, each female and male, and had additionally attacked mates of hers, together with punching individuals and throwing them into furnishings. He dangled a pal of hers over a balcony, she mentioned.

The 38-year-old testified on Tuesday that in her decade-long on-and-off relationship with Combs, she endured years of abuse.

Ventura filed a lawsuit in 2023 in opposition to Combs, accusing him of bodily and sexual abuse. Although the 2 settled that lawsuit for an undisclosed sum, it prompted a federal investigation that led to Combs’s arrest in September 2024.

Combs faces expenses together with racketeering conspiracy, intercourse trafficking and transportation to interact in prostitution. He has pleaded not responsible and denied all allegations.

The trial, anticipated to final at the least eight weeks, shouldn’t be being televised.

If convicted, Combs, who has been jailed since his arrest final yr, may spend the remainder of his life in jail.