Casandra “Cassie” Ventura, whose 2023 lawsuit against ex-partner Sean “Diddy” Combs sparked a wave of accusations against the mogul, took the witness stand for her second day of testimony in Combs’ sex trafficking trial.
Toward the end of her testimony on Wednesday, Ventura recounted the night Combs allegedly raped her in 2018 after they went out to dinner. At the time, Ventura was in a relationship with her now-husband Alex Fine, but said she was getting closure from her relationship with Combs.
She recalled them being playful and even romantic when he brought her home.
“And then he raped me in my living room,” she alleged. “I just remember crying and saying no, but it was very fast.”
Ventura maintained sporadic contact with Combs after they split, she said. But in March 2019, he sent her a cryptic text that said, “iPads full of skeletons,” referring to the sexually explicit videos he still had of her, she claimed. She also said Combs wanted to be reimbursed for personal training sessions that Fine, who used to work with Combs, did with her.
New York prosecutors began the day by questioning Ventura about her interactions with Combs in the aftermath of the 2016 hotel hallway assault that she said left her with a black eye and swollen lip.
Security video shows Combs chasing Ventura down a hallway, grabbing her by the neck and pushing her to the ground before kicking her repeatedly. After she left the hotel, Ventura said Combs repeatedly texted her to call him, telling her “the cops are here” and “I got six kids.” “You’re going to abandon me all alone?” he allegedly said, according to The New York Times.
She said she was questioned by police at her apartment after a friend there called police. She answered a couple of their questions, but did not want to identify who assaulted her in order to protect him. Ventura said Combs later tried to get into her apartment when the police left, creating “chaos outside the door.”
Ventura said at the time she was focused on a movie premiere she had upcoming, two days after the assault, and texted Combs to “stay far away from me.” The couple went on to attend the premiere for “The Perfect Match” together.
The jury was shown a photo of her at Combs’ house wearing her gown and sunglasses, which she said were to cover her black eye. They were also shown a photo of her and Combs together at the premiere. She pointed to a bruise on her right shin.
“I had bruises on my body that weren’t completely covered by the makeup. I had quite a bit of makeup on my face,” she said, according to CNN.
Combs is on trial for charges of racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking by force, fraud or coercion, and transportation to engage in prostitution. He faces a lifetime prison sentence if found guilty.
The questioning at the trial then turned back to the sexual so-called “freak-offs” that Ventura said she was directed to participate in and help organize for Combs by reaching out to male escorts and hiring them with his money. Videos of the orgies, which she said she asked him to delete, were later used against her as blackmail, with Combs threatening to release them when he was angry with her, she said.
“One time I dated someone else and that’s what it was all about — ‘I’m going to put out two embarrassing videos of you,’” she said he told her, according to the Times.
Ventura said she did not want to perform in the freak-offs and that she would get high on drugs to numb herself, to the point where she was on-and-off addicted to opioids. The sex sessions also resulted in her experiencing painful urinary tract infections and sores on her tongue, she said.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Emily Johnson then asked Ventura about Combs’ “swingers” lifestyle, which is how the defense has described his sexual preferences. Ventura seemingly agreed with the “swingers” label, but said she did not want to participate in the alleged frequent freak-offs.
During some encounters with escorts, Ventura claimed, Combs would physically assault her. “Grab me up. Push me down. Hit me in the side of the head. Kick me. You name it,” she said.
She then described an abusive incident in 2013 when she said Combs came to her apartment as she was headed to a music festival with two friends. She claimed that Combs yelled at her about sleeping on the couch rather than packing. When he tried to attack her, Ventura’s friends “jumped on his back,” she said.
In a scuffle, Combs allegedly threw Ventura down, causing her to cut her eyebrow on the corner of a bed. She was later brought to a plastic surgeon’s office in Beverly Hills to get her gash sutured, she said. The Times reported that Ventura later claimed she texted Combs a picture of her injury, writing, “so you can remember.”
Combs allegedly responded: “You. Don’t know. When to. Stop. You ave pushed IT Too far. And continue to push. Sad.” According to Ventura, the attack left her with a permanent scar.
Ventura also read a 2017 text she sent to Combs telling him “nothing good” was coming from the freak-offs anymore. “You treat me like you’re Ike Turner,” she wrote, comparing Combs to singer Tina Turner’s abusive ex-husband.
Later in her testimony, Ventura claimed that multiple employees of Combs saw him abuse her over the years. She said one assistant told her she’d quit because of how Combs treated her.
She also testified that both she and Combs initiated physical altercations during their on-and-off relationship, but said she was the one who ended up with bruises, some severe enough to require days to recover from.
Ventura alleged that Combs first physically abused her around 2007 or 2008, after she saw him flirting with someone at a group dinner. After they left in his car, “he knocked me around and was just really mean,” she said.
One blow sent her flying to the floor, she said. “I was just shocked.”
Another time, Ventura said, Combs beat her so badly that she had to hide out in a hotel for a week so her injuries could heal. She said she wanted to go home to her mother, but knew “it wouldn’t be safe” considering Combs’ “capabilities, access to guns, the threats he made prior to that.”
CNN reported that Ventura’s mother read details about the assault online that didn’t include Ventura’s name, and asked her daughter if the incident referred to her.
“I didn’t tell my mom the truth because I was ashamed,” Ventura testified. “I also didn’t want to put my mother in danger for knowing anything of that magnitude.”
The prosecution then asked Ventura about her previous relationship with rapper Kid Cudi, whom she claimed Combs found out about in 2011 after going through her phone during a freak-off. She said Combs lunged at her with a wine bottle opener, but she managed to escape the attack. She also claimed that Combs threatened to harm both her and Cudi and release two sexually explicit videos of her.
That same month, Ventura emailed her mother to say that Combs had threatened her and Cudi and had said he would be out of the country when he sent someone to hurt them. She later broke things off with Cudi, saying she feared that Combs would make good on threats that included blowing up Cudi’s car.
“Too much danger, too much uncertainty of what could happen if we continued to see each other,” she said on the witness stand.
Combs’ alleged abuse also extended to his employees and assistants, Ventura testified. She claimed to have once witnessed him punching a man in the head and dragging a woman — a future witness identified as Victim-4 or “Mia” — out of bed.
Ventura also said Combs dangled one of her friends over an apartment balcony and threw her onto patio furniture. The incident was referenced in Ventura’s 2023 suit against Combs and another one filed in 2024 by a woman named Bryana “Bana” Bongolan.
Ventura also alleged that in 2018, Combs physically assaulted her best friend of 17 years. She claimed that he hit her friend in the head with a wooden hanger after he saw the two women planning to do drugs together.
The prosecution asked Ventura why she started rehab and trauma therapy in 2023, to which she replied, “I was spinning out. I didn’t want to be alive anymore at that point.”
She recalled telling her husband, “You can do this without me. You don’t need me anymore,” before attempting to walk out into traffic outside their home. She said Fine stopped her.
After rehab, Ventura said, she began writing a book with help from her mom as “trauma therapy” to process her time with Combs. She claimed she even sent him a few chapters. “I really wanted Sean to read the information,” she said. “I wanted him to understand what I had to learn to understand over that period.”
Ventura then contacted a lawyer to reach out to Combs’ representatives about paying her $30 million for the rights to her story, “to be compensated for the time, the pain,” she said. At that point, she did not receive any money. But when she settled her civil suit against Combs that November, Ventura testified that they had settled for $20 million.
Day 1 of Ventura’s testimony on Tuesday recalled the nature of her former relationship with Combs, also her former record label head, plus explicit details about his alleged “freak-offs” that she participated in out of fear. She testified about the dayslong, drug-fueled sex sessions with Combs and male escorts that left her feeling “disgusting” and “humiliated.” On the stand, she also spoke about suffering domestic abuse at the hands of Combs, notably the 2016 incident where surveillance footage captured the disgraced mogul physically assaulting her at the InterContinental Hotel in Los Angeles.
According to The New York Times, Ventura, who appeared in court eight and a half months pregnant, choked back tears as she described several traumatic instances during her time dating Combs.
“There were violent arguments that would usually result in some sort of physical abuse,” she claimed on the witness stand.
Ventura talked about being initially “enamored” by Combs when she met him at age 19, only knowing him to be “this exciting, entertaining, fun guy” before he allegedly revealed a darker side of himself, particularly his extreme moods.
“Make the wrong face, and the next thing I knew, I was getting hit in the face,” Ventura claimed.
She also testified about some of Combs’ associates, like personnel who were allegedly around 24 hours a day: “Security protected him, kept an eye on me.” Sometimes, she said, guards or personal assistants would come to find her when Combs didn’t know her whereabouts.
Prosecutors then homed in on Combs’ alleged freak-offs, asking Ventura to describe them in graphic detail, including how long they’d last, where and how often they’d take place, how sex workers were hired for them and what sexual materials were used — condoms, baby oil and Astroglide (a lubricant) were allegedly kept stocked.
Ventura said, “Eventually it became a job for me, pretty much.”
Ventura’s testimony will likely last through the remainder of the week.
Need help? Visit RAINN’s National Sexual Assault Online Hotline or the National Sexual Violence Resource Center’s website.