NEW YORK (AP) — The R&B singer Cassie returned to the witness stand Wednesday in ex-boyfriend Sean “Diddy” Combs' sex trafficking trial and described a vicious beating he 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 one of the degrading encounters with male sex workers that Combs orchestrated and called “freak offs.” After the footage was leaked last year, Combs apologized.
Prosecutors have accused Combs of exploiting his status as a powerful music executive to violently force women into 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.
Cassie, whose legal name is Casandra Ventura, was being questioned by the prosecution. Combs’ lawyers were expected to begin their cross-examination later Wednesday, when they would get the chance to challenge her credibility or poke holes in her account of what happened.
Jurors on Wednesday were shown photographs of Cassie’s swollen lip after the 2016 hotel attack. She testified that she took the selfies during her Uber ride after leaving the hotel and that she wore sunglasses because she had a black eye. Once home, she said a friend saw her injuries and was “super upset” because she’d “seen me with black eyes and busted lips before.”
Cassie said her friend called police, but that after police arrived, she declined to reveal who had injured her, so they left. “In that moment, I didn’t want to hurt him that way,” she said. “I wasn’t ready.”
She also testified that Combs kept texting her after she left the hotel. She said he claimed police were about to arrest him. And, when she refused to take his calls, she said Combs told her that if she didn’t pick up the phone, he would never talk to her again.
Jurors were then shown pictures of Cassie and Combs at a movie premier soon after the hotel attack. Cassie described bruises on her body that were visible in the photographs and said she was unable to cover up all the damage with makeup. She wore dark sunglasses to cover up her black eye.
During her first day of testimony on Tuesday, she spent hours recounting grotesque and humiliating details of life with Combs, including the many freak offs that were held over a decade until about 2017 or 2018.
Cassie said she was 22 when Combs first asked her to take part in a freak off, with the first one occurring in his Los Angeles home with a male stripper. It left her feeling dirty and confused, but relieved that Combs was happy, she said.
“It was his fantasy,” she said. “He was controlling the whole situation. He was directing it.”
She described being pressured into multiday sexual encounters with sex workers while Combs gave directions. She also recounted being beaten numerous times by Combs when she did things that displeased him — like smiling at him the wrong way.
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.
Cassie accused Combs of getting her to submit to him by threatening to publicly release videos of her with male sex workers, and she feared more violence if she refused his demands.
“I feared for my career. I feared for my family," she testified. "It’s just embarrassing. It’s horrible and disgusting. No one should do that to anyone.”
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.
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Associated Press writer Dave Collins in Hartford, Connecticut, contributed to this report.
Michael R. Sisak And Larry Neumeister, The Associated Press
