The focus of the second day of Sean “Diddy” Combs’s criminal trial was the Government’s star witness, singer Casandra Ventura, known as Cassie.
Ventura spent five hours telling the jury about her submission to an “impossible to count” number of sessions of sex with strangers.
Here are my three takeaways from Cassie’s first day:
Harassment, Romance, and Ruin
Combs signed Cassie to his Bad Boy Records label in 2006, when she was 19.
“Sean controlled a lot of my life, whether it was career, the way I dressed, everything,” Cassie told the jury.
She described herself then as “super young, naive, total people pleaser.”
Their relationship evolved into romance on a 21st birthday trip with Combs and friends to Las Vegas.
“He kissed me in the bathroom” of his hotel suite, Cassie said, adding that she was “confused,” cried, and ran off.
But soon they were meeting in hotels. When Combs took her on a weekend in Miami, they had sex for the first time on a boat, Cassie said. They drank wine during the day and took ecstasy at night.
Eventually, she realised she was just one of Combs’ many girlfriends. She knew he had a family and children. The couple tried to keep their relationship secret for several years.
“I was in love with him,” Cassie said. “It was my first real adult relationship.”
He called her “baby girl” while she called him “Pop Pop” – the same nickname she had used for her grandfather. He also called her CC, for Cassie Combs, a name she would never take on.
Cassie said Combs rented her an apartment in Los Angeles only a few minutes’ drive from his house. He often dropped by unannounced.
Combs abused her “too frequently,” Cassie told the jury.
“If they were violent arguments, they would result in physical abuse,” she said. “Mash my head, knock me over, drag me, kick me.”
She described having busted lips, black eyes, and bruises all over her body.
Sex with Strangers and Shame
Within a year of hooking up, Cassie testified, Combs started asking her to participate in voyeuristic “freak-offs” where she had sex with other men, typically paid escorts, in front of Combs and sometimes with Combs and another man having sex with her at the same time.
“So, I could perform for Sean,” Cassie said. “Eventually it became a job for me.”
The freak-offs started when she was 22. Combs, a music industry mogul 17 years older, staged the first session at his home in Los Angeles.
“I was confused, nervous, but loved him very much and wanted him to be happy,” Cassie told the jury. “I didn’t feel like I had much of a choice. I didn’t know what ‘no’ could mean, what ‘no’ could turn into.”
Cassie said she worried Combs could become violent or write her off, or that he could blackmail her with videos he was recording of her having sex with other men.
“It was always in the back of my mind that I would be hurt by him,” Cassie said. “The freak-offs became a job where there was no space to do anything else.”
Cassie said the coercive gatherings sometimes lasted 36, 48, or 72 hours, with three or four different men for hire, and she spent a lot of time “recovering from partying.”
“It was a fantasy. He was controlling the whole situation,” Cassie said.
Cassie said Combs had them lightly disguised by wearing masquerade masks. She wore wigs, lingerie, and Lucite “stripper heels,” she said.
The ex-girlfriend said the freak-offs made her feel “a mixture of dirty with confusion.”
Once she started, she said she felt she couldn’t refuse Combs’ demands.
“Didn’t want to make him upset,” Cassie said. “His trust meant a lot to me at that point.”
Trafficking, Transportation for Prostitution and Racketeering Conspiracy
Prosecutor Johnson led Cassie through a series of questions. Cassie herself is the first and most serious victim of sex trafficking, according to the government.
The “freak-offs” occurred mostly in hotels around the U.S. – in Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Miami, New York, and Atlanta – and in getaways like Ibiza, Spain, and Turks and Caicos, she said.
They would book suites under pseudonyms like Jackie Starr and Frank Black.
The sexual sessions were drug-fueled by ecstasy, cocaine, psychedelic mushrooms, marijuana, and ketamine, Cassie told the jury. “I couldn’t imagine myself doing any of that without a buffer,” she said.
Combs’ staff and assistants not only helped obtain drugs, Cassie testified, his employees often obtained supplies for the sensual escapades – bottles of Johnson’s Baby Oil (which would be heated in water to make their skin glisten), Astroglide lubricant, and scented candles.
When asked if she could tell the jury the total number of freak-offs she participated in, Cassie said, “That would be impossible.” At their peak, they occurred almost weekly, she said.
“I felt pretty horrible about myself. Felt disgusting. I was humiliated.”
Cassie said she craved the one-on-one time she experienced with Combs during the freak-offs.
“I wanted to have sex with him,” Cassie told the jury.
What’s next?
Cassie is expected to continue testifying for two more days, after, Combs’ legal team will cross-examine her.
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