New York (AFP) – Sean “Diddy” Combs’s former partner Casandra Ventura told jurors at the music mogul’s sex trafficking trial Tuesday how he subjected her to “disgusting” and “humiliating” drug-fueled, marathon group sex sessions. Ventura also detailed beatings and abuse at the hands of Combs in bombshell testimony that underpins much of the prosecution’s case against the music industry figure, who is alleged to have used violence and blackmail to manipulate women over many years.
Ventura, who is visibly pregnant, said of the so-called “freak-off” sex parties that she was “just in love and wanted to make (Combs) happy — to a point I didn’t feel like I had much of a choice.” Ventura, who is 17 years younger than Combs and first met him at 19 years old, described how the mogul would sometimes urinate on her, or he would instruct one of the numerous sex workers he engaged to do so. The escorts, almost always men, were paid upwards of thousands of dollars in cash after encounters.
“It was disgusting. It was too much. It was overwhelming,” she said, adding that the hotel rooms used for the marathon sex sessions were often trashed, with establishments charging sizable cleaning and repair bills including for blood and urine-stained sheets. Asked if she enjoyed anything about the curated encounters that Combs allegedly instructed her to coordinate, Ventura wept openly. “I was just in love and wanted to make him happy,” she said of their on-and-off relationship that lasted more than a decade.
Combs’s defense team indicated that during cross-examination, which is expected as early as Wednesday afternoon, they would seek to emphasize that Ventura took drugs of her own free will and behaved erratically. Ventura said that during the encounters she took drugs including ecstasy, ketamine or cocaine, and that the “drugs honestly helped” her meet Combs’s demands to stay awake for days on end. The drugs also had a “dissociative and numbing” effect, she said, “a way to not feel it for what it really was.”
Ventura said “Sean controlled a lot of my life — whether it was (my) career, the way I dressed.” And much of that control turned violent, she said, her voice quavering at points: “He would mash me in my head, knock me over, drag me, kick me, stomp me on the head if I was down.” In a hotel surveillance clip from March 2016 shown to jurors Monday and again Tuesday, Combs is seen brutally beating and dragging Ventura — widely known as “Cassie” — down a hallway. The prosecution played parts of the clip while Ventura was on the stand. When asked why she didn’t fight back or get up, Ventura answered simply that curled up on the ground “felt like the safest place to be.”
Former security officer at a Los Angeles InterContinental hotel, Israel Florez, told the court Monday that he was first on the scene after that incident and that Combs sought to pay him off. Florez’s testimony provided the foundation for the prosecution to introduce the security footage that was published by CNN last year. The panel of 12 jurors and six alternates responsible for determining Combs’s fate have started hearing of the famed artist’s explosive outbursts, exploitation of his partners, and an attempt to preserve his own reputation and celebrity through bribery.
But the 55-year-old’s defense team insists while some of his behavior was questionable — at times constituting domestic abuse — it did not meet the evidence needed to prove racketeering and sex trafficking charges. Combs has pleaded not guilty on all counts. Combs’s defense lawyer Teny Geragos called Combs’s accusers “capable, strong adult women,” and said his situation with Ventura was a “toxic relationship” but “between two people who loved each other.”
Florez’s testimony was followed by a male dancer who engaged in a sexual relationship, often in exchange for money, with Combs and Ventura from 2012 to approximately the end of 2013. He concluded his testimony Tuesday. If convicted, the one-time rap producer and global superstar, who is often credited for his role in bringing hip-hop into the mainstream, could spend the rest of his life in prison. The proceedings are expected to last eight to 10 weeks, and Combs was joined in the courthouse by family members as well as former lovers including Misa Hylton.
© 2024 AFP
