The R&B singer Cassie testified on Wednesday that Sean “Diddy” Combs raped her when she ended their decade-long relationship, after he locked her in a life of physical abuse by threatening to release degrading sexual videos of her.
Addressing the Manhattan courtroom for a second day in Combs’ federal sex trafficking trial, Cassie said Combs forced his way into her Los Angeles apartment and raped her on the living room floor after she said she was breaking up with him.
Cassie also said she did not feel she could refuse Combs’ demands for her to have “hundreds” of encounters with male sex workers — which he watched and controlled for hours and even days — because he would make her “look like a slut” if he made the videos public.
“I feared for my career. I feared for my family. It’s just embarrassing. It’s horrible and disgusting. No one should do that to anyone,” said Cassie, whose legal name is Casandra Ventura.
Prosecutors showed the jury five still images from the sex videos on Wednesday. Cassie said the images depicted her at various stages of the encounters Combs called “freak-offs”. One juror’s eyes widened, and another shook his head from side to side.
She sued Combs in 2023, accusing him of years of physical and sexual abuse. Within hours, the suit was settled for 20 million dollars — a figure Cassie disclosed for the first time on Wednesday — but dozens of similar legal claims followed from other women, sparking the criminal investigation against him.
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Prosecutors have accused Combs of exploiting his status as a powerful music executive to violently force Cassie and other women to take part in the drugged-up sex parties.
Combs is charged with five counts, including sex trafficking by force, fraud or coercion. He denies all of the allegations.
Combs’ attorneys have acknowledged that he could be violent, but they say the sex he engaged in was consensual and that nothing he did amounted to sex trafficking or racketeering.
Combs’ lawyers were expected to begin cross-examining Cassie later on Wednesday, when they would get the chance to challenge her credibility or poke holes in her account of what happened.
Also on Wednesday, prosecutors showed Cassie a binder of photos and she identified 13 as male sex workers she said she recruited at Combs’ behest for freak-offs in Las Vegas, Miami and Los Angeles.
She said she had sex with all of them, though she could not remember all of their names. She identified a half-dozen other escorts in court on Tuesday.
The day’s testimony began with Cassie continuing to describe a vicious beating Combs gave her that was caught on surveillance video at a Los Angeles hotel in 2016.
The video showed Combs hitting, kicking and attempting to drag Cassie back to their room. She said it happened as she was leaving a freak-off. After the footage was leaked last year, Combs apologised.
Cassie said the assault left her with a black eye, swollen lip and other bruises. After she left the hotel, she said her friend called police but when they arrived she declined to reveal who had injured her and the officers left.
“In that moment, I didn’t want to hurt him that way,” she said. “I wasn’t ready.”
During her first day of testimony, she spent hours recounting grotesque and humiliating details of her life with Combs, including the many freak-offs that were held over a decade until about 2017 or 2018. She also said Combs beat her numerous times.
The freak-offs took place in private, often in dark hotel rooms, unlike Combs’ very public white parties in the Hamptons that attracted A-list celebrities.
On Wednesday, Cassie testified that she would try to recover from freak-offs by taking IV fluids, getting massages and having a chef cook meals. She said she developed an opioid addiction from using them after freak-offs as a coping mechanism.
She said after the encounters, she felt emotionally “just really empty and I felt just gross.” She said she also “felt like I did my job.”
Cassie met Combs in 2005, when she was 19 and just at the start of a career as a singer, model and actor. She had a hit song, Me & U, in 2006 off an album released by Combs’ Bad Boy Records.
Combs, who was 37 when they met, nurtured her career early on and also became her boyfriend for a decade.
Cassie left Combs’ record label in 2019 and then sued him in 2023, accusing him of years of physical and sexual abuse. The suit was settled within hours but dozens of similar legal claims followed, sparking the criminal investigation against him.
Combs, 55, has been jailed since September. He faces at least 15 years in prison if convicted. The trial is expected to last about two months.
