Sometimes the shrinking is slow.
Over time, without noticing, you are trained to not question, to surrender, to be tiny. Tip-toeing on eggs becomes as normal as breathing. To crack one cracks you, so you bend and break into quiet surrender.
Cassie Ventura continues to be questioned, by lawyers and the public, about why she didn’t leave Sean “Diddy” Combs. They wonder why she didn’t just say no. I wonder, would we be so comfortable slinging around salacious allegations if we called the freak-offs what they are: rape and trafficking at their worst, sexual intimidation and gross abuse at their least worst.
Go through the testimony and replace the word “freak-off” with rape. Or call it coerced sexual violation. Diddy’s so-called fantasies were forced onto Cassie’s reality. He met her when she was 19 and he was 37. Her career and heart in his hands — he held the power. She testified she was 21 or 22 by the time he first beat her. It was in that timeframe she said he pulled her into the violent, degrading, and drug-fueled sexual acts Diddy likes to call “freak-offs.”
Over the years he is alleged to have recorded them, threatened to release them, used them to control and scare her. The jury is seeing some of those violent visuals this week as Cassie took the stand and publicly shared the most hurtful and horrid parts of her life. They are not her whole life. They are not her identity. She is more than the abuse she suffered. I do not wonder why she couldn’t just leave sooner.
Globally, one woman or girl is killed every 10 minutes, according to UN Women. In America, an average of 76 women are shot and killed by an intimate partner each month according to analysis by Everytown Research. An abusive partner with a gun is more likely to kill.
We’ve seen how abusive partners with fame find ways to skirt the system for decades and in some cases, for always. Especially, when they are responsible for the art we love. I remember the 49th anniversary issue of Essence magazine. I was in awe of the beauty of Diddy and his three daughters together on the cover for a Mother’s Day celebration. I remember the photos of him with all of his children and his own mother inside. This was barely a year after the death of brilliant talent promoter and model Kim Porter, his longtime on-again, off-again love and mother of four of his children. It was in her honor.
“My daughters have taught me patience. They’ve opened up my feminine side,” he told Essence. “They really taught me how to treat other women. It took me to have daughters to really know how to treat a woman and I’m still learning.”
He said that in 2019, after having beat Cassie over the course of 11 years and allegedly abusing a great many others. He said that in 2019 when his daughters were around 12 or 13. These young ladies are now approaching the age Cassie was when she met their father. I don’t believe they taught him violence.
No, I haven’t once thought why Cassie didn’t just leave or say no. I only hope her healing comes faster than her hurt.
Abuse and control doesn’t always come at a victim fast. The grooming can be gradual. I remember the way my parents beat on one another and how their patterns hid in the recesses of my choices for years to come.
Maybe you express an opposing opinion and are punished by silence, cancelled plans, and lectures on your lack of gratitude. Perhaps you forget to answer a call. Next thing you know your phone is snatched out your hands accompanied by threats of losing it. Possibly, by the time you realize you’re lost in someone else’s control, you’re already isolated, repeatedly beat down, demoralized, and hard isn’t a heavy enough way to describe the challenge of finding your way out.
Diddy is said to have had assistants and security helping detail her every move. Her home and hotels alike would be damaged when she tried to leave or did anything that displeased him. He’d have her things confiscated. He is alleged to have ordered the firebombing of rapper Kid Cudi’s car when she tried to move on by dating him. Testimony shows Diddy used violence to keep her in fear and under his control. She was not a willing participant. She was his victim trying to survive.
Now, almost 20 years after Cassie first met Diddy, she is in her third trimester of pregnancy with her third child with husband Alex Fine. And people continue to speculate about “how her marriage will survive this testimony.” There is a portion of the public who think she should be held responsible for the gruesome acts that happened to her instead of seeing the monster of misogyny that hovers above us all.
Language matters. And Diddy’s dark twisted fantasies are not freak-offs. They are a fatal train of sex trafficking, abuse, and violence.
Cassie is no longer small. She’s expansive, bold, and on some level, I hope she feels free.
Jeneé Osterheldt can be reached at jenee.osterheldt@globe.com. Follow her @sincerelyjenee and on Instagram @abeautifulresistance.
