The R&B singer Cassie testified Wednesday that her ex-boyfriend Sean “Diddy” Combs stored her in a cycle of abuse and exploitation by threatening to launch movies of her encounters with male intercourse employees that he orchestrated.
Addressing the Manhattan courtroom for a second day in Combs’ federal intercourse trafficking trial, Cassie stated that regardless that she loathed having drugged-up intercourse with strangers, she couldn’t reject Combs’ calls for as a result of he would make her “look like a slut.”
“I feared for my profession. I feared for my household. It’s simply embarrassing. It’s horrible and disgusting. No one ought to try this to anybody,” stated Cassie, whose authorized identify is Casandra Ventura. She sued Combs in 2023, accusing him of years of bodily and sexual abuse. The go well with was settled inside hours however dozens of comparable authorized claims adopted from different ladies, sparking the prison investigation in opposition to him.
Prosecutors confirmed the jury 5 nonetheless photographs from the intercourse movies, recovered from digital gadgets that Cassie offered to investigators. Cassie stated the pictures confirmed her with male intercourse employees and at varied phases of the encounters, which Combs known as “freak-offs,” that typically lasted days. One juror’s eyes widened, and one other shook his head back and forth.
Prosecutors have accused Combs of exploiting his standing as a robust music government to violently power Cassie and different ladies to participate in sexual encounters. He is charged with 5 counts, together with intercourse trafficking by power, fraud or coercion.
Combs denies all the allegations and has pleaded not responsible. His attorneys acknowledge he may very well be violent, however say the intercourse he and others engaged in was consensual and that nothing he did amounted to intercourse trafficking or racketeering.
Combs’ attorneys had been anticipated to start cross-examining Cassie later Wednesday, once they would get the prospect to problem her credibility or poke holes in her account of what occurred.
During her first day of testimony, she spent hours recounting particulars of her decade-long relationship with Combs, together with the freak-offs which she stated led to 2017 or 2018. She additionally stated Combs beat her quite a few occasions. The encounters occurred in personal, typically in darkish resort rooms, in contrast to Combs’ very public events that attracted A-list celebrities.
Cassie’s testimony is exposing the darkish underside of a relationship that, for years, performed out publicly in footage of the couple smiling on purple carpets and movie star occasions. She stated she met Combs in 2005, when she was 19 and he was 37. Combs signed her to a 10-year contract together with his Bad Boy Records label. Within a number of years, they began courting, Cassie stated.
They had been photographed in 2016 attending the premiere of the movie “The Perfect Match,” solely two days after Combs beat and kicked Cassie at a Los Angeles resort after a freak-off — an assault captured on safety digicam footage performed on TV and in court docket. After the footage was leaked final yr, Combs apologized. Jurors had been proven photographs of them on the premier.
Cassie, now 38, calm and poised after an emotional first day of testimony, stated she used make-up to coverup her bruises and wore sun shades to cover a black eye for the premiere. She stated she sneaked right into a popcorn closet on the movie show to change attire for an afterparty in order that bruises on her legs wouldn’t be seen.
On one other event in 2013, whereas she was packing to go to Drake’s music competition in Canada, Cassie stated Combs scuffled along with her mates and threw her right into a mattress body. She sustained a “pretty significant gash” above her left eye. Combs’ safety personnel introduced her to a plastic surgeon in Beverly Hills to get the wound stitched up, she stated.
Afterward, she stated she texted Combs a photograph of her injured face and wrote: “So you can remember.” Combs replied: “You don’t know when to stop. You pushed it too far. And continued to push. Sad.”
Her 2006 tune “Me & U” went platinum, however when prosecutors requested on Tuesday what occurred to her music profession, Cassie testified that finally a lot of her week went towards participating in and recovering from the freak-offs, till they “became a job.” She left Combs’ file label in 2019.
She stated Combs would typically threaten to embarrass her by releasing movies of her participating in intercourse acts. She stated he’d do it when he was indignant or to instill worry in her, like when she began courting another person.
After a visit to the Cannes Film Festival in 2013, Combs started taking part in a recording of a freak-off on his laptop computer laptop as he and Cassie sat collectively on a industrial flight. Cassie stated Combs advised her that he was “going to embarrass me and release them.”
Assistant U.S. Attorney Emily Johnson requested if there have been “people around you” when Combs was taking part in the movies on the telephone. Cassie stated there have been. After touchdown in New York, she testified, they went to dinner after which had one other freak-off proper afterward.
Also Wednesday, prosecutors confirmed Cassie a binder of photographs and she or he recognized 13 as male intercourse employees she stated she recruited at Combs’ behest for encounters in Las Vegas, Miami and Los Angeles. She stated she had intercourse with all of them, although she couldn’t bear in mind all of their names. She recognized a half-dozen different intercourse employees in court docket on Tuesday.
She testified Tuesday that Combs would pay the lads 1000’s of {dollars} to have intercourse along with her for 36 or 48 hours, and the longest lasted 4 days. The encounters left her feeling emotionally “just really empty, and I felt just gross.”
“It was something I hated doing,” she stated, however she endured them as a result of she was in love with Combs and “felt like I did my job.”
Cassie testified Wednesday she would get better by getting IV fluids, massages and having a chef cook dinner meals. She stated she developed an opioid dependancy from utilizing them after the encounters as a coping mechanism.
Combs, 55, has been jailed since September. He faces at the very least 15 years in jail if convicted. The trial is anticipated to final about two months.
Associated Press author Dave Collins in Hartford, Connecticut, contributed to this report.
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