The first week of Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs’ sex trafficking trial saw a litany of bombshell claims and evidence unveiled before the Manhattan courtroom in New York.
R&B singer Cassandra ‘Cassie’ Ventura delivered horrifyingly graphic testimonies alleging that the music mogul physically and psychologically abused her over more than a decade from 2007-2018.
The 38-year-old detailed the regular beatings she allegedly experienced, the rapper’s use of blackmail and scare tactics to coerce and manipulate, depraved sex acts she claims she was forced to participate in – and the medical toll she suffered as a result.
A male escort allegedly hired by Combs to engage in a variety of sexual acts with Ventura during his notorious ‘freak off’ parties also took the stand to explain how ‘Diddy’ purportedly pushed Ventura into unprotected sex with strangers and orchestrated various sexual encounters for his own pleasure.
In response, lawyers for Combs sought to portray Ventura as a willing and eager participant in the music mogul’s sexual lifestyle. His defence says that, while he is guilty of domestic violence, nothing he did amounted to a criminal enterprise.
Combs, 55, was once worth nearly $1 billion thanks to a string of hits on his Bad Boy Records label in the 1990s, including his 1997 chart-topper with singer Faith Evans, I’ll Be Missing You.
But he was arrested in September last year, months after Ventura sued him for sexual assault in a civil case. That move prompted dozens more women to come forward with their own legal claims, triggering a criminal investigation.
Combs’ downfall was hastened by the release of a devastating video of him beating Ventura in the corridor of a hotel in Los Angeles in 2016. The video, which was first broadcast by CNN last May, was played in full to the trial before Ventura, a male escort and others gave their testimonies.
Prosecutor Emily Johnson said the trial would hear testimony from victims who ‘will tell you about some of the most painful experiences of their lives.
‘During this trial, you are going to hear about 20 years of the defendant’s crimes. But he didn’t do it alone, he had an inner circle of bodyguards and high-ranking employees who helped him commit crimes and helped him cover them up.
‘Kidnapping, arson, drugs, sex crimes, bribery and obstruction. These are just some of the crimes the defendant and his inner circle committed again and again. You’re going to hear about all of them during this trial.’
Combs denies racketeering conspiracy, two charges of sex trafficking and two charges of transportation to engage in prostitution. He faces life in jail if convicted.
Sean Combs and Cassie Ventura attend the premiere of ‘The Perfect Match’ at ArcLight Hollywood on March 7, 2016 in Hollywood
Diddy’s defensce says he is guilty of domestic violence but not of sex-trafficking or racketeering, and that the government is targeting him for his sexual preferences
Cassie – real name Cassandra Ventura – is testifying despite being over eight months pregnant with her third child
Punched, dragged, stomped on and cut open
It was Ventura’s initial civil suit against Combs for sexual assault that led authorities to open a criminal investigation into the rapper on other charges.
CCTV footage was released showing the rapper beating Ventura in the corridor of the now-closed InterContinental Hotel in Century City, Los Angeles in 2016.
That clip, in which a bear-chested Combs is seen grabbing Ventura by the hair and dragging her to the ground before kicking and stomping on her, was played before the court earlier this week.
The prosecution’s first witness was Los Angeles police officer Israel Florez, who in 2016 was a security guard at the InterContinental Hotel in LA when the CCTV of the assault on Ventura was filmed.
He said he was called to help a ‘woman in distress’ on the sixth floor, where he found Cassie sitting in the corner covering her face while Combs was slouched in a chair wearing just a towel with a ‘devilish’ look on his face.
Florez also told the court he used his phone to film the assault video from the hotel security monitor to show his wife.
‘If I had told my wife what had happened, she wouldn’t have believed me,’ he said.
Ventura herself went on to describe the infamous encounter which occurred as she was trying to leave a freak off.
‘I grabbed what I could and Sean followed me into the hallway and grabbed me up, threw me on the ground, kicked me, tried to drag me back to the room, rook my stuff’.
She was attending a movie premiere in the following days and wanted to be careful about her looks.
‘I’m not sure what happened. I got hit by Sean and had a black eye and at that point all I could think about was getting out of their safely. I had my premiere and didn’t want to mess it up.
‘I just knew I had to get out… The next thing I was just thrown to the ground. I covered my face and stayed there.’
Asked about the violence in her lengthy relationship with the disgraced hip-hop titan, Ventura, currently eight months pregnant, said: ‘He would bash me on the head, knock me over, drag me, kick me, stomp me in the head if I was down.
‘I’d get knots in my forehead. Busted lips, swollen lips, swollen eyes… whites of eyes would be red. Bruises all over my body.’
Prosecutor Emily Anne Johnson asked 38-year-old Ventura: ‘How frequently physical.’ She replied: ‘Too frequently.’
Ventura described another altercation where she was left with a deep gash that required surgical treatment after allegedly being attacked by Combs after he found her asleep on a sofa.
‘When Sean came in I was asleep and it was commotion. Him yelling at us.
‘[My friends] jumped on Sean’s back because he was trying to attack me. We ended up in the living room, into the master bedroom.
‘When he threw me down I cut my eyebrow on the corner of my bed. It was a Sunday so nothing was open.
‘Sean had security bring me to a plastic surgeon’s office to suture it,’ she alleged.
Footage of the rap mogul assaulting his then-girlfriend Cassie in a Los Angeles hotel in 2016
Ventura was seen looking stoic as she made her way to court for a face to face with her allegedly abusive ex, Diddy, on Tuesday
Jurors were shown images Ventura allegedly sustained following beatings by Combs
Cassie and Diddy (pictured in 2006) first met in 2005, when she was 19 and he was a 39. Her allegations of abuse against the rapper are at the center of his sex trafficking trial
Forced to taste escort’s urine
The first day of Ventura’s testimony got off to an explosive start as she described the freak offs in graphic detail, including one alleged instance where a male escort urinated in her mouth at Combs’ request.
‘Within the first year of our relationship Sean proposed to me this idea, this sexual encounter that he called voyeurism where he’s watching me in sexual activity with a third party, specifically another man,’ she said.
‘It entails the hiring of an escort and setting up this experience so that I could perform for Sean.
‘It involved Sean being able to watch me with the other person and actually direct us on what we were doing sexually.’
One of Combs’ particularly sick requests, Ventura alleged, was to have a male escort urinate on her and in her mouth during freak offs.
‘Sometimes he himself (Combs) or he would have the escort urinate on me… there was no conversation. It was a turn on for him, so it happened.’
When asked if she had wanted this, she said a firm ‘no’, describing it as ‘humiliating if anyone was there to see it.
‘It was disgusting, it was too much, overwhelming’. In an indication of the procedure, she said she was choked and ‘I was laid on the floor in a position I couldn’t easily get out of.
‘There’s not a whole lot of control… taken that many drugs and being on the floor with two men peeing on you.’
The lead star in four day ‘freak off’ orgies
Ventura wept as she spoke about her first freak off party and how she did not want to engage in any of them. ‘I just felt it was all I was good for,’ she said.
‘I felt pretty horrible about myself. I felt disgusted. I was humiliated, I didn’t have those words to put together at the time, how horrible I felt. I couldn’t talk to anybody about it so.’
Ventura said the only part of the freak offs she enjoyed was the ‘time’ she spent with Combs during them.
She told the court: ‘Plainly the freak offs became a job where there was no space to do anything else but to recover and try to feel normal again.
‘Staying up for days on end, taking drugs and other substances, drinking. Having sex with a stranger for days.
Asked how long the freak offs lasted, Ventura replied: ‘They ranged anywhere from 36, 48 to 72 hours.
‘The longest one ever was four days. Maybe even more on and off with breaks.’
The indictment against Diddy alleged the freak offs were sometimes so intense that participants required IV drips to recover.
The FBI seized 96 electronic devices when it raided Diddy’s mansion in March last year, eight of them containing an ‘extraordinary’ 90TB of data, prosecutors said.
Many of the civil lawsuits against Diddy claim he filmed sexual assaults perpetrated against victims, many of them drugged.
Cassie (L) and Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs attend the ‘Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garcons: Art Of The In-Between’ Costume Institute Gala at Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 1, 2017 in New York City
Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs sits before U.S. District Judge Arun Subramanian as jury selection continued at his sex trafficking trial in New York City, New York, US, May 6, 2025
Cassie and Diddy first met in 2005, when she was 19 and he was a 39-year-old superstar. Her allegations of abuse against the rapper are at the center of his sex trafficking trial. They are pictured in New York in 2006
Unprotected sex with multiple partners
Ventura detailed how Combs’ freak offs would often go down, beginning with voyeurism and ending with multiple escorts engaging in sexual acts with her.
‘First sex act, masturbating and looking at each other – I would be looking at the escort and they would be looking at me. I would describe what I saw in detail. That is what turned (Combs) on… his fantasy.
‘It was always awkward… sitting describing someone’s penis to another male was pretty awkward and humiliating but eventually it became normal. It would lead to intercourse.’
Ventura said sometimes both the escort and Combs would have sex with her, other times the mogul would ‘just watch’.
She added: ‘If I was having intercourse with an escort, Sean would walk up and have me give him oral sex.’
Asked if the escorts orgasmed, the star witness replied: ‘Yes, usually when it was OK for them per Sean.
‘But if they did then Sean and I would go into the next room and he’d want me to put the semen on his body… usually on his chest, on his nipples’.
If escorts orgasmed without being given permission by Combs they were paid less, said Ventura.
One male escort who testified on Monday, Daniel Phillip, explained how Combs gave him specific instructions on how and when to orgasm.
Combs allegedly instructed Phillip to orgasm inside Cassie, with Phillip mentioning that the pair rarely used condoms.
The escort said he ‘pretended’ to orgasm and was subsequently asked repeatedly by Combs whether he was ‘sure’ he had done so inside her.
Forced into a ‘G-hole’ and told not to ‘slow down’ freak offs with tranquilisers
Ventura explained how Combs’ freak offs allegedly became more and more frequent with more booze and drugs introduced to their participants.
‘They became almost weekly. It became, depending on where we were… weekly for a consistent amount of years,’ she said, going on to explain how she was plied with a variety of drugs.
‘The drugs honestly helped. Ecstasy and molly (MDMA). We started to other drugs like cocaine later on,’ she added, claiming that the drugs helped to numb her and help her dissociate in the course of the depraved sex parties.
She detailed one incident in which she claims to have blacked out while taking GHB while engaged in a freak off with Combs and an escort she called Dave.
GHB is a depressant renowned for its use in sexual assault cases as it often causes amnesia.
‘At that time we were taking GHB. On G you can go into a ‘G-Hole’ and I blacked out. I woke up nude in the shower and Dave and Sean were freaking out outside of the bath,’ she claimed.
In another moment of testimony she explained how Combs had instructed her not to take the tranquiliser Ketamine – a substance Ventura said was her drug of choice to help her endure the freak offs.
Texts were shown to the jury where Combs appeared to ask Ventura not to use ‘K’ as it would ‘slow’ the experience down.
‘You know we have to have a proper FO WITHOUT NO K. I need to get it out of my head. I HATE K!!! So you let me know when,’ the message read.
‘What was Sean saying about K?’ Johnson asked Ventura.
‘That it took time out of the Freak Off,’ she replied.
‘It was my preferred drug because it was very dissociative and you can go into something called a K Hole when you’re not present in the moment. You’re just high and not doing any actions.’
As part of her testimony this week, Ventura said she eventually developed an opioid addiction after regularly consuming drugs after the freak offs to make her ‘feel numb’.
Diddy’s defense says he is guilty of domestic violence but not of sex-trafficking or racketeering, and that the government is targeting him for his sexual preferences
Blackmailing with freak off videos and psychological abuse
Ventura said Combs repeatedly threatened to release videos of her taking part in freak offs, on one occasion playing them on a flight even though other passengers were around them.
She said she could not do anything to anger or upset the rapper as she was worried Combs ‘would be mad enough to put them out and then I would have to answer to my mother’.
She told jurors: ‘Over time it turned into the fact there were blackmail materials to make me feel if I didn’t do it, it would be hung over my head or these things would become public.’
The singer also explained how Combs initially appeared to be a charming, successful and engaging man, but quickly began controlling her behaviour.
Combs’ moods ‘varied depending on what was going on. It could change at the drop of a conversation, a bad conversation that I had nothing to do with,’ she claimed.
‘At certain times I knew it wasn’t even about me…. the next thing I was getting hit in the face.
‘If I wasn’t smiling at him the way he wanted… I just looked a certain way he didn’t like. Maybe I was a brat, or something, he would let me know I need to fix my face or watch my mouth.’
Ventura paused to regain herself, then continued: ‘Psychological was every day, not know what he was going to be when he woke up that day…. that was a lot, someone constantly telling you who to be.’
Combs exerted control by taking away things he had paid for such as a car or apartment if the mood suited him, she said.
Ventura added that these items would be removed for ‘as long as I was being punished’.
Ventura also claimed that Combs would leave guns lying around his homes to scare her.
‘The guns came out here and there – I always felt it was a little bit of a scare tactic,’ she said.
Medical issues
Asked what medical issues the freak offs led to, Ventura said: ‘I had a lot of stomach issues from taking drugs.’
She went onto detail an extensive history of severe gastrointestinal issues she claims was brought about by the mix of narcotics she was plied with during freak offs, and those she took herself to numb the pain and shame.
‘I couldn’t imagine myself doing any of that without having some sort of buffer or a way to not feel the way it really was.’
She also said the constant sexual intercourse with multiple partners and the use of various lubricants led to repeated infections.
‘I’d get frequent UTIs, if you’ve had one you know how painful that is’.
Ventura said the freak offs were sometimes back to back, adding: ‘I couldn’t get rid of it [the UTI]. I was doing the Freak Off with an infection’.
‘It was really painful for a long time. I actually can’t believe I dealt with that,’ she reflected emotionally on the stand.
‘Cipro [antibiotic medicine] didn’t even work any more. It was just was a mess, really painful.’
Ventura went on to reveal that the cocktail of booze, drugs, oral sex and consumption of oils and lubricants as a result caused sores on her tongue and inside her mouth.
Ventura alleged that Combs threatened to blow up rapper Kid Cudi’s car after he found out she was dating him
King Combs (R), son of Sean Combs, holds an umbrella for Janice Combs, mother of Sean Combs, as they arrive at federal court on Wednesday where Ventura continued her explosive testimony
Threatening Ventura’s boyfriends
Though Ventura dated Combs for over a decade, there were periods where the two split before reconciling.
Ventura claimed that each time they split, Combs became exceedingly jealous and threatened prominent artists that were linked to Ventura, including the actor Michael B. Jordan and rapper Scott Mescudi, known as Kid Cudi.
The court heard that Combs allegedly planned to blow up a car belonging to Kid Cudi after finding out in late 2011 that Ventura was dating him.
‘I remember him pulling a wine bottle opener between his fingers and lunging at me,’ she testified. ‘Eyes blacked out, super angry and I got out of there.’
She fled to Mescudi’s house, but not before Combs hit her, she claimed.
‘When I was leaving, he kicked me in my back on the way out so I had a big bruise on my back,’ Ventura said.
‘I fell to the floor and left. I had bruises in other places on my body. I remember that one because he kicked me with the bottom of his foot in my back.
‘He mentioned that when we were out of the country, that Scott’s car would be blown up.’
She said she eventually decided to break up with Mescudi over fears for both their safety.
‘It was too much,’ Ventura added. ‘Too much danger, too much uncertainty.’
Ventura also recalled how she allegedly sparked up a romance with actor Jordan while filming in South Africa after hearing that Combs was seeing one of his on-off girlfriends.
In her initial lawsuit against Combs, the singer said she began a ‘flirtatious relationship’ with Jordan while she was in South Africa – and that they did have an affair.
‘She spent New Year’s Eve with this actor but Mr Combs soon found out,’ the lawsuit stated.
‘Mr Combs called the actor and threatened him. The actor proceeded to call Ms Ventura and tell her, ‘You really need to call Mr Combs’.’
Ventura was once again asked by defence lawyers to confirm that Combs suspected her of having an affair with a man in 2015, to which she responded the man in question was the actor.
