“You make the wrong face and the next thing I knew I was getting hit in the face,” she said. Cassie, whose legal name is Casandra Ventura, accused Combs of gaining her submission by threatening to publicly release videos of her with male sex workers.
Combs’ attorneys have acknowledged Combs could be violent but maintain that the sexual acts were consensual. They say nothing he did amounted to sex trafficking or racketeering — the charges that he faces.Read more: Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs trial: Day One takeaways
Lawyers for Combs have yet to cross-examine Cassie, a type of questioning that will give them an opportunity to challenge her credibility or poke holes in her accounts of what happened. The trial is expected to last about two months.
Prosecutors have accused Combs of exploiting his status as a powerful music executive to violently force women into drugged-up sex parties he called “freak offs.”
Cassie met Combs in 2005, when she was 19 and just at the start of a career as a singer, model and actor. She had a hit song, “Me & U,” in 2006 off an album released by Combs’ Bad Boy Records. Combs, who was 37 when they met, nurtured her career early on and also became her boyfriend for a decade.
Cassie left Combs’ record label in 2019 and then sued him in 2023, accusing him of years of physical and sexual abuse. She told jurors during her testimony that there were loving moments during their relationship but that Combs was always controlling and often violent.
Read more: Who is Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs, the hip-hop mogul now facing a sex trafficking trial
Cassie said she was 22 when Combs first asked her to do a “freak off,” with the first one occurring in his Los Angeles home with a male stripper that left her feeling dirty and confused, but relieved that Combs was happy.
“It was his fantasy,” she said. “He was controlling the whole situation. He was directing it.”
Combs, 55, has been jailed since September. He faces at least 15 years in prison if convicted.
