Cassie and Kim’s court message to Australians

A sad fact has emerged for Aussie women as two huge celebrity court cases have been dominating the headlines.

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Reading celebrity news normally doesn’t feel like this. To dive into the trashier realms of the internet is like eating a Mars Bar, a sugar hit of a treat to be privately scoffed, a momentary escape from the gloom of 2025. Oh no, do tell me more about which West Village boîte is currently being patronised by Taylor Swift and that fella she is dating who seems to like a Gucci tracksuit!

Wait, what has the ex-husband of the dogwalker of a Real Housewife been caught doing? Which buffed up Chris (Evans, Pratt, Hemsworth, Pine) has inexplicably taken their shirt off at just the moment a paparazzo happened to have their lens cap off?

This week that changed.

Right now, the two biggest celebrity stories in the world make for brutal reading and feature words like “rape,” “stomp”, “drag me”, and “black eye”. In New York and Paris this past week, courts have heard two famous, wealthy women detail alleged attacks, their testimony laying bare their trauma, fear and suffering.

Here’s the thing: If violence can allegedly reach any woman, anywhere, at any time, then no woman is ever truly safe. Neither fame nor money nor career success can every truly protect a woman from the threat of physical and sexual violence. None of us are ever immune.

On Tuesday, singer Cassie Ventura and reality star and entrepreneur Kim Kardashian were both giving evidence about their alleged attacks.

Cassie Ventura and Sean Combs pictured in 2016. Picture: Frederic J.Brown/AFP

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For three full days now, Ms Ventura has been in the witness box in a New York courtroom in the federal sex trafficking trial of her former partner Sean “Diddy” Combs. From the stand, Ms Ventura has alleged a nearly unthinkable litany of instances of physical and emotional abuse from Combs, evidence that the Washington Post has described as “harrowing”.

There were too many alleged incidents of abuse, the court heard, during their 11-year relationship, for her to remember them all.

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The court was shown images of a shattered vase and disarray in the aftermath of Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs’ attack on then-girlfriend Cassie Ventura. Picture: US Attorneys SDNY

Cassie Ventura, right, walks out of the courtroom past Sean Diddy Combs after testifying. Picture: Elizabeth Williams via AP

“He would knock me over, drag me, kick me, stomp my head if I was down,” Ventura said.

She said that one of Combs’ bodyguards “started to cry” when he saw her after an alleged attack that she says left her with “black eyes, golf ball-sized knot (on my) forehead, busted up lip”.

During her testimony Ventura, 38, has alleged she was forced to take part in “freak offs” – days long, drug-fuelled sex sessions that included escorts. She said that during a “freak off”, Combs would often “grab me up. Push me down. Hit me in the side of the head. Kick me.

You name it.”

(On Thursday, Diddy’s lawyers told the judge the rap mogul admitted he had committed “domestic violence” in his relationship with an accuser, identified as Victim-1, who is expected to testify. His lawyer Marc Agnifilo said the defence will “take the position that there was mutual violence” in Comb’s relationship with Victim-1.)

During her testimony Ventura, 38, has alleged she was forced to take part in ‘freak offs’. Picture: Instagram Picture: Instagram

Ventura said she Combs would often ‘grab me up. Push me down’. Picture: Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images

On the same day that Ventura entered the witness box, in Paris, Kardashian was telling a court that she thought she would be raped and murdered during a “life-changing” ordeal during a visit to the city in 2016. There to attend fashion week, armed robbers allegedly broke into her hotel room and stole $15.4 million worth of jewellery during the “traumatic” attack.

Ms Kardashian said that on the night in question, she was taken at gunpoint into her bedroom and zip-tied. Wearing only a bathrobe, “it was terrifying to feel that you were going to be raped and killed. I would not wish this on anyone. I would not wish it on my worst enemy.”

“I absolutely did think I was going to die.”

Kim Kardashian with Kris Jenner leaves the justice palace after testifying. Picture: AP Photo/Aurelien Morissard

“The emotion and trauma” of the incident “forever changed” her life, the mother-of-four said and “the ordeal shattered her sense of safety,” according to the New York Times.

The fundamental truth that has been laid bare this week: No woman is ever safe. Violence can reach a woman anywhere.

The villa where a 72-year-old man, suspected of being among the armed men who took part in the stunning break-in at a luxury apartment of Kim Kardashian in central Paris, was arrested. Picture: AFP/Yann Coatsaliou

Kardashian at the trial. Picture: Leo Vignal/AFP

In Australia, the same bears out. No woman, no matter how well off she might be or whichever harbourside postcode she calls home, is ever truly out of reach of the threat of violence. Wealth does not magically protect you from the possibility of a partner turning violent nor does stardom or having enough diamonds to open a personal De Beers concession.

Take Vaucluse in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, which is the country’s most expensive suburb, with a median house price of $7.4 million.

Kardashian attends the LACMA Art+Film Gala at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) in Los Angeles. Picture: Etienne Laurent/AFP

Last year Kellie Sloane, the NSW MP for Vaucluse, stood in the Legislative Assembly and recounted a conversation she had had when she was first elected in 2023.

“I asked the local police in my community what their greatest concern was,” Ms Sloane said.

“What was the issue that took up most of their time?”

She had thought it might be drugs or car theft. She was wrong.

“It was, and still is, domestic violence.”

Even in the affluent east, “we have a hidden epidemic of domestic violence that grows deeper and more disturbing,” Ms Sloane wrote in The Daily Telegraph last year. Data from the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, she said, “showed (that— in the past two years, the rate of domestic violence had increased by 16.2 per cent in (Sydney’s) east – one of the state’s highest.”

Kellie Sloane seen in Woollahra. Picture: Rohan Kelly

The same bears out in Melbourne’s Stonnington and Port Phillip local government areas, which covers the prosperous areas of Toorak, Prahran, South Yarra, Albert Park and St Kilda.

In the year to December 2024, there were 2507 reported “family incidents”, according to Victoria’s Crime Statistics agency.

Do I need to go on?

While in Australia, regional areas do report higher rates of family and domestic violence, to dive into the crime stats is to be presented with the cold hard data that there is no corner of our society, no rich postcode or street full of houses with eight figure price tags, that is untouched by this scourge.

What Ventura and Kardashian’s testimony underscores is the danger, the looming persistent storm cloud-like possibility of violence, that hangs over all women. It can assail any one, anywhere, anytime and no matter how much Hermès they might have nonchalantly strewn across the floor.

Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.

Originally published as Cassie and Kim’s court message to Australians