NOTE: The next article accommodates disturbing particulars and video footage. Please learn at your individual discretion.
Because the intercourse trafficking trial for Sean “Diddy” Combs enters its fourth day, Combs’ ex-girlfriend, Cassie Ventura, is on the stand to face cross-examination from Combs’ attorneys.
The R&B singer testified Wednesday that Combs raped her when she ended their decade-long relationship, and he or she described a life locked in bodily abuse, which she says she couldn’t depart after he threatened to launch degrading sexual movies of her.
She stated the movies may wreck all the things she’d labored for. “I feared for my profession. I feared for my household. It’s simply embarrassing. It’s horrible and disgusting. Nobody ought to do this to anybody,” she stated.
Ventura additionally spoke about an alleged incident in 2011 when Combs found that she had begun courting rapper Child Cudi, whose actual identify is Scott Mescudi.
Combs, she stated, went via Ventura’s cellphone and lunged at her with a “wine bottle opener” after he learn textual content messages between the 2.
Ventura testified that she ended issues with Mescudi following Combs’ threats towards them on the finish of 2011. “An excessive amount of hazard, an excessive amount of uncertainty of what may occur if we continued to see one another,” she stated.
Ventura stated that Combs threatened to explode Mescudi’s automobile and that he wished Mescudi’s mates to be there when it occurred.
Combs’ attorneys have acknowledged the rapper might be violent however keep that the sexual acts had been consensual. They are saying nothing he did amounted to intercourse trafficking or racketeering (the fees he faces), however insisted he simply has distinctive sexual proclivities.
Day 4
Ventura, who’s within the third trimester of being pregnant, returned to the witness stand in a black swimsuit that appeared nearly like a tuxedo with a light-coloured shirt beneath.
Anna Estevao, a lawyer for Combs, opened her cross-examination by asking about her relationship with Combs. “You and Sean Combs had been in love for 11 years. You liked him and believed that he liked you as effectively?” she requested.
“Sure,” Ventura replied.
Estevao continued to ask Ventura questions with “sure/no” responses about their relationship.
The primary displays launched by Estevao had been textual content messages exchanged between Combs and Ventura within the early years of their relationship. In a single, Combs wrote, “I’m actually a fortunate man.” Ventura wrote again: “I’m a really fortunate lady. … Love you a lot.”
In a single 2008 e-mail, Ventura instructed Combs she was a fortunate lady. “I like you sooo a lot,” she wrote after Combs thanked her for flying to Atlanta to be with him.
In August 2009, in a message despatched by Combs, the rapper instructed her: “I like you sooooo a lot it makes me cry.”
Ventura replied: “U hungry pop pop?” (She testified Tuesday that Pop Pop was a nickname she used for Combs, whereas he generally referred to as her Child Lady.)
He stated no, to which Ventura instructed him to let her know if he modified his thoughts.
When Combs’ lawyer requested Ventura why she wished to spend a lot time with him, she replied: “As a result of I fell in love with him.”
“He was charismatic — massive character, bigger than life,” Ventura instructed the courtroom. “The start of the connection was actually quick, fast-paced, scary. However the extra time I spent with him, his actual character got here out — candy, attentive.”
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The defence began to debate the sexual encounters, often called freak-offs. “So, to make him completely happy you instructed him that you simply wished to do freak-offs, proper?” Estevao requested Ventura.
“No,” Ventura replied. “There’s much more to that.”
The jury was then proven a message from 2009 by which Combs and Ventura had been discussing a freak-off with an escort named “Jules.”
“I’m all the time able to freak off lolol,” Ventura wrote.
After viewing the textual content message, Ventura whispered to the Choose Arun Subramanian, who referred to as a 10-minute break.
After the break, the defence confirmed extra textual content messages that Ventura despatched to Combs.
In a 2009 textual content message, Ventura wrote, “Once we used to freak off when [sic] we had been so in love. There have been no questions requested, it felt proper, prefer it actually made sense for the subsequent step in our intercourse life collectively. I get nervous that I’m simply turning into the girlfriend that you simply get your fantasies off with and that’s it. I don’t get the opposite half… Anymore a minimum of.”
Combs’ lawyer requested Ventura if her hesitation mirrored within the textual content message got here from concern that she wouldn’t be seen because the rapper’s “full girlfriend” as a result of she was participating within the freak-offs with male escorts.
“I feel that’s a approach to have a look at it I assume, yeah,” Ventura stated.
Ventura laughed as Combs’ lawyer confirmed her an e-mail she despatched to him close to the beginning of their relationship, nearly 18 years in the past.
“It’s making me giggle as a result of it’s from 2007,” Ventura stated, momentarily breaking the strain of a cross-examination that, up to now, has required her to learn and listen to specific messages she had exchanged candidly with Combs.
“I do know,” Estevao responded. “We’re taking you again.”
Within the e-mail, Ventura wrote, “I’ve by no means felt so liked, secure and empowered since we’ve come collectively. Then again, your [sic] continuously weary of me.”
Estevao then requested Ventura if it’s “truthful to say” that Combs’ profession was ruined after she sued him in November 2023, making public for the primary time the idea of “freak-offs.”
“I may perceive that,” Ventura responded.
Ventura was requested about Combs’ “swingers” life-style, and he or she testified that she generally watched him have intercourse with different ladies.
She stated that this occurred round 4 occasions all through the course of their decade-long relationship.
Estevao requested Ventura if she thinks freak-offs had been associated to the swingers life-style.
“In a sexual approach,” Ventura responded, earlier than including: “They’re very totally different.”
Combs’ attorneys stated they don’t count on to be carried out questioning Ventura till the top of the day on Friday. If that occurs, it’s potential she’ll want to return again to courtroom on Monday so prosecutors can ask her extra questions throughout a part of testimony often called re-direct.
Subramanian famous that the edges had beforehand agreed that she can be carried out by week’s finish, since she’s pregnant and as a result of give start quickly to her third baby.
The defence’s revised timing “is the precise reverse of what I used to be instructed,” the choose stated.
When requested whether or not she thought Combs was a drug addict, Ventura stated, “I might say he was an addict.”
She accused Combs of utilizing ecstasy and cocaine and instructed the courtroom that he would grow to be indignant or unstable throughout drug withdrawals.
“I’m not a health care provider, coming off of sure drugs he can be fairly irritated,” she added.
Ventura stated that Combs instructed drug sellers in Los Angeles to cease delivering medicine to her.
She additionally acknowledged that Combs had really useful that she get assist for her drug points.
On Wednesday, Ventura testified that she had an “off-and-on” dependancy to opiates. She stated she took them to return down off celebration medicine, together with ecstasy, which she stated she’d use throughout freak-offs. V instructed the courtroom that she relied closely on opiates as a result of they numbed her feelings, permitting her to flee from the truth of the freak-offs.
Ventura stated that Combs solely wished her to do medicine with him slightly than with mates.
The defence lawyer highlighted situations of Ventura’s anger with Combs and her jealousy over consideration he gave different ladies.
“You’re making me appear to be a facet piece and that isn’t what I believed I used to be,” Ventura instructed Combs in a 2013 textual content message.
Ventura stated Combs made it clear from the early days of their relationship that he didn’t need her seeing anybody else. He’d get indignant if he suspected her of dishonest, she stated.
However the identical guidelines didn’t apply to him, she instructed jurors, and he or she confronted him after she noticed social media posts connecting him to different ladies.
Ventura testified that after a couple of years with Combs she longed to be a much bigger a part of his life — however that he wouldn’t let her in.
She stated she’d get indignant that Combs was occurring holidays along with his kids and his ex-partner, the late Kim Porter, and that he was spending holidays with them as a substitute of her.
Ventura additionally instructed the courtroom that there have been by no means any medicine within the child oil used throughout the freak-offs. Combs was accused in a lawsuit final 12 months of spiking the infant oil with GHB.
What Combs is on trial for
U.S. prosecutors allege that for 20 years, behind the scenes, Combs was coercing and abusing ladies with assist from a community of associates who helped silence victims via blackmail and violence.
Combs faces an indictment that features descriptions of freak-offs, that are outlined within the courtroom doc as “elaborate and produced intercourse performances that Combs organized, directed, masturbated throughout, and infrequently electronically recorded.”
Quite a few witnesses have come ahead to accuse Combs of terrorizing individuals into silence by choking, hitting, kicking and dragging them, in line with prosecutors. One indictment alleges that Combs dangled somebody from a balcony.
Though dozens of women and men have alleged in lawsuits that Combs abused them, this trial will spotlight the claims of 4 ladies.
Combs is charged with intercourse trafficking, racketeering conspiracy and transportation to have interaction in prostitution. He has denied all the fees towards him and has rejected a plea deal, selecting to go to trial as a substitute.
If discovered responsible within the New York courtroom, he may face life in jail.
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World Information will probably be masking the Diddy trial in its entirety. Please examine again for updates.
— With recordsdata from The Related Press
