Sean Diddy Combs sex trafficking trial live: Bombshell allegations from day five
Cassie Ventura has wrapped up her testimony in the sex trafficking trial of former boyfriend Sean “Diddy” Combs. Here are the key revelations from day five. Warning: Graphic
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Sean “Diddy” Combs’s former partner Casandra “Cassie” Ventura returned to the witness stand to be cross-examined by the defence at the hip-hop mogul’s sex-trafficking trial.
Here are the bombshells from day five.
DAY 5:
VENRURA MADE TO FEEL ‘WORTHLESS’ DURING FREAK OFFS
Cassie Ventura broke into tears on the witness stand in a New York court when asked about the depraved sex acts Sean “Diddy” Combs allegedly forced her into -- and beatings he inflicted during his “freak-offs.”
Prosecutor Emily Johnson asked Ventura about the defence’s suggestion that she had “cherished” the highly-choreographed sex sessions where she was allegedly forced to sleep with male escorts as Combs watched.
“How would you describe an escort urinating in your mouth while you were on the floor?” Johnson asked -- drawing a quick objection from the defence, which was sustained, and prompting Ventura to begin crying.
Ventura continued answering questions through tears as Johnson asked her how many times Combs pressured her to participate in a “freak-off” while she had a urinary tract infection.
“Frequently,” she responded.
When asked how she felt getting beaten by Combs during the sex marathons, Ventura responded: “Worthless. Um, just like dirt. Like I didn’t matter to him. Like I was nothing. Absolutely nothing.”
VENTURA CHEATED ON NOW-HUSBAND WITH DIDDY
Ventura also testified that she cheated on then-boyfriend, now-husband, Alex Fine with Combs after she had split up with him and after an alleged sexual assault.
entura confirmed to the court that she got a FaceTime call from her now-husband, Alex Fine, the last time she and Sean “Diddy” Combs slept together in September 2018.
The two were intimate a few days after Combs allegedly raped Ventura, following their break-up.
“When you were having sexual intercourse did you get a FaceTime call? Did you answer?” Combs’ attorney Anna Estevao asked.
“No,” Ventura replied.
“Did you recognise the caller ID to be your now-husband?” Estevao pressed, to which Ventura replied, “Yes.”
Ventura said that Fine, a personal trainer with whom she shares two children, eventually found out that she had been sleeping with her ex.He also later discovered about the alleged rape -- and punched a wall when he did, Ventura testified.
‘I WILL CUT YOU’: CASSIE THREATENS MAN OVER SEX TAPE
In court, jurors heard a clip of an audio recording from 2014 when Ventura was threatening to kill a man who claimed he’d seen a sexually explicit video of her.
Ventura could be heard attempting to get more information out of the man about the alleged video he’d viewed, but when he wouldn’t divulge details, she screamed at him.
“I will kill you if you don’t show me right now,” Ventura could be heard yelling in the recording. “I will cut you up and put you in the f**king dirt right now.”
“Put that s--t up right now,” the recording continued. “I’m tired of you talking s--t right now. It’s not going to be blood on my hands, someone else is going to do it.”
LAWYER CLAIMS COMBS’ BIPOLAR COULD LINK TO ALLEGED RAPE
Sean “Diddy” Combs’ lawyer tried implying that his alleged 2018 sexual assault of ex-girlfriend Cassie Ventura could have been linked to his bipolar disorder.
The diagnosis came up when defense attorney Anna Estevao asked Ventura about what she had told investigators regarding Combs’ mood the night of the alleged rape.
Ventura testified that she said Combs was acting “strangely” earlier that night at dinner -- “nice but strangely” -- and that he “wasn’t in his right mind” because when she pleaded with him to stop, he didn’t.
Combs’ attorney then asked Ventura to confirm whether she told prosecutors that “his behavior [that night] could be attributed to his bipolar disorder.”
Ventura muttered, “I guess so.”
It was the first time the defense mentioned a potential bipolar diagnosis at Combs’ trial.
DAY 4:
VENTURA TESTIFIES ABOUT NIGHT DIDDY OVERDOSED AT PLAYBOY MANSION
Combs’ lawyer asked Cassie Ventura if she remembered the night he overdosed on opiates in February 2012.
“Was that around the time Whitney Houston died? I believe so,” Ventura replied.
“That evening, we had a ‘freak-off.’ We went to a sex club in San Bernardino. And then he had a party at the Playboy Mansion that night, and I went home.”
She later said: “From what he told me, he took a really strong opioid that night. But we didn’t know what happened, so we took him to the hospital.”
Combs’s lawyer later asked: “During the entire duration of your relationship, you two were addicted to painkillers?”
“Very much so,” Ventura replied.
VENTURA MENTIONS EDDIE MURPHY, BRUCE WILLIS IN FAMILY GRIPE
Cassie Ventura once emailed Sean “Diddy” Combs, referencing Bruce Willis and Eddie Murphy’s blended families as she lamented not being close to the music mogul’s kids.
“As much as you think you’re Bruce Willis you aren’t,” Ventura wrote Combs on July 2, 2013. “He’s married and before he was married, the family as a whole went on trips together or just him and his woman. Eddie Murphy and Paige took his kids away on their own.”
The R&B singer was apparently referencing how Murphy’s wife Paige Butcher has a relationship with the comedian’s children. Willis also has a blended family after having kids with first wife Demi Moore and second wife Emma Heming Willis.
Ventura’s message goes on to say she had been on “the edge of tears all week.” Ventura clarified for the jury that she was upset she didn’t have the chance to form a relationship with Combs’s children.
VENTURA USED BURNER PHONE DURING AFFAIR WITH KID CUDI
Ms Ventura was questioned about her relationship with rapper Scott Mescudi, who goes by the stage name Kid Cudi.
She told the court she was on a break from her relationship with Combs when she began dating him.
The court heard Combs introduced Ventura to Mescudi because he thought a collaboration between the two would be good for her career.
“We were like, not in the best place,” Ventura said of her relationship with Combs.
“We were on a break.”
Ventura said she obtained a burner phone to communicate with Mescudi to keep the relationship secret from Combs.
“I did not want him to find out,” she said.
“I thought it would be way too dangerous.”
The court heard despite being on a break, Combs and Ventura were still meeting for “freak-offs” and it was at one of those he read her emails and found out about the relationship with Mescudi.
“Did you feel justified cheating on him with Mr Mescudi because of Mr Combs’ infidelities,” Ms Estevao asked.
“I could have, I don’t know,” Ventura replied.
The court heard a short time later, she broke up with Mescudi and immediately resumed her relationship with Combs.
‘I’M ALWAYS READY TO FREAK OFF’: CASSIE’S EXPLICIT TEXTS READ TO JURY
The jury was shown messages that Cassie Ventura sent to Sean “Diddy” Combs saying she was excited to partake in “freak-offs.”
“I’m always ready to ‘freak-off’ lol,” Ventura said in a BlackBerry message to Combs on August 5, 2009, two years into their relationship.
In another message from that day, Ventura tells Combs: “I can’t wait to stare at some big black d-k.”
“I can’t wait to have my legs cocked back behind my head to feel some d-k tease my p---y raw,” she says in another message to Combs.
In another message exchange two days later, Ventura sent an explicit message to Combs describing wanting to perform oral sex.
Combs replied: “I can’t wait to watch you. I want you to get real hot.”
Ventura responded: “Me too, I just want to be uncontrollable.”
In one text from 2017, near the time they broke up, Ventura also said, “I’m too excited” about one of their upcoming “freak-offs.”
She also messaged Combs that she forgot the iPad – which Ventura testified they used to record the sex marathons.
14-PAGE TEXT TROVE REVEALS SEX FANTASIES, VOYEURISM
The questioning returned to text messages exchanged between the couple, this time in mid 2012.
In a 14-page long exchange of text messages, Combs asks Ventura about her sexual fantasies.
She tells him that she loves when they make love with one another after “freak offs” with escorts.
They later talk about Combs having sex with a female escort while she watches.
Ventura said during their relationship, that happened three to four times, but usually the freak offs were her with other men.
Combs once texted Ventura “have fun, impress me” when she was on her way to a sex shop to get supplies for a “freak-off.”
The jury saw messages between the couple sent on May 26, 2017 – near the end of their relationship – about her run to a sex shop called the Pleasure Chest.
Ventura testified that when she went to the X-rated store, she “would get different sexual supplies. Lubricants, outfits.”
DIDDY WAS ADDICTED TO ‘SUCCESS’, OPIATES
Sean “Diddy” Combs’ lawyers were questioning Cassie Ventura about the music mogul’s alleged addictions.
“What was he addicted to?” lawyer Anna Estevao asked.
“Success,” Ventura said.
“What substances?” Ms Estevao continued.
Ventura said it varied but that Combs at one point was addicted to opiates, and that she had witnessed him going through withdrawal from those drugs “more than once.”
DIDDY OVERDOSED ON OPIOIDS AT THE PLAYBOY MANSION
Combs’s lawyer asked Cassie Ventura if she remembered the night he overdosed on opiates in February 2012.
“Was that around the time Whitney Houston died? I believe so,” Ventura replied.
“That evening, we had a ‘freak-off.’ We went to a sex club in San Bernardino. And then he had a party at the Playboy Mansion that night, and I went home.”
She later said: “From what he told me, he took a really strong opioid that night. But we didn’t know what happened, so we took him to the hospital.”
DAY 3:
PHOTO EVIDENCE OF TRASHED HOTEL ROOM
Newly released photographs showing the shocking aftermath of Sean Combs’ attack on Ms Ventura during the infamous 2016 hotel beating were shown on day three.
Pictures displayed in court showed the remains of the broken vase Combs threw at Ventura during the sickening attack, which was caught on tape, the New York Post reports.
The photos show fragments of the vase scattered across the floor and flecks of soil speckled across the wall.
“I just remember it coming towards me. I remember it hitting a wall,” Ventura said of the vase as she testified in court for a second day.
IV FLUIDS, DAYS TO RECOVER
Ms Ventura said after a freak off, she and Combs would take days to recover.
“Usually we’d get IV fluids, massages, we’d eat, the chef would cook us some food, just trying to take care of ourselves,” she said.
She told the court she developed an addiction to opiates that she would use to disassociate in the aftermath of freak offs.
“Opiates made me feel numb and that’s why I relied on them so heavily.”
‘THAT’S ME’: CASSIE IDs HERSELF IN PIC WITH BABY OIL
Ms Ventura maintained her composure as she was shown confronting photos taken from videos of freak offs.
Asked to identify who is in the photos, she spoke in a flat voice as she told the court, “that’s me”.
“That’s me and Greg,” she said of one photo.
She said one image was her covered in baby oil with candles and lubricant cap bottles on the nightstand near her.
Another she said was “me and Dave. We are in a freak off.”
Ms Ventura said one photo depicted her on a couch at a freak off wearing high heels.
URINARY INFECTIONS, STOMACH ISSUES
The court heard evidence from Ventura that she developed health issues as a result of the days-long sex parties including stomach issues from the drug use and urinary tract infections that often didn’t go away for weeks.
“I was actually doing the freak offs with the (UTI) infection,” she said.
“I was just a mess. It was really painful for a long time. I actually can’t believe I dealt with that.”
She said participating in the sex parties with a UTI was “horrible” and that while Combs knew she had an infection, he encouraged her to continue.
TONGUE LESIONS FROM LICKING OIL, LUBE
Ms Ventura said she also developed painful sores on her tongue from licking body oil and lubricant and from the friction of oral sex with escorts.
In one text message shown to the court, she tells Combs: “I have all these sores on my tongue so it’s kind of uncomfortable and I think I have another UTI,” she messaged him with a sad face emoji.
VENTURA TOOK ‘NUMBING AND DISSOCIATIVE’ DRUGS TO COPE
Ms Ventura said that during the encounters she took drugs including ecstasy, ketamine and 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.”
In text messages shown to the court, Combs tells Ms Ventura they need to stop using the drug ketamine during freak offs because it interrupted the event.
“…[A] successful freak off is one we remember,” he told her.
Ms Ventura told the court said ketamine was her preferred drug of choice during the sex parties because it allowed her to disassociate from what was happening.
She said the drug would put her in what she called a “K hole” where she was mentally not present in the room.
BRUISES, BLACK EYES, SPLIT EYEBROW COVERED WITH MAKEUP
Ms Ventura said she had tried to avoid the violence with Combs because she was due to walk the red carpet for the premier of a film she had starred in, The Perfect Match.
She said later that day, she attended a dress fitting at Combs’ LA mansion. The court was shown a photo of her in the dress with dark sunglasses on to hide her black eye.
Later photos of the film premiere show Ms Ventura and Combs on the red carpet together.
A bruise is visible on her left shoulder.
“I got hit in the face so I had a black eye,” she said.
Ms Ventura said she used makeup to conceal most of her injuries.
A photo of her in a green dress at the premier after-party was also shown to the court.
In it, a bruise is visible on her left shin.
Ms Ventura described one episode of violence when Combs came to her apartment in LA when she was meant to be packing for a music festival in Canada thrown by Drake.
She said Combs became furious when he saw her napping on her couch and attacked her.
He chased her into the bedroom where he knocked her to the ground and her head smacked into the bedframe, splitting her eyebrow open.
Combs had a plastic surgeon’s office open on a Sunday to suture the wound and she later attended the music festival as planned.
A photo of Ventura at the festival alongside musician French Montana was shown to the court.
In it, her hair is styled over her eye to cover the injury.
COMBS IN JEALOUS RAGE KICKED VENTURA IN BACK
The court heard in about 2011, Ms Ventura began secretly dating rapper Kim Cudi, real name Scott Mescudi.
Ms Ventura said Combs found out while the pair were in the middle of a freak off when he went through her phone and looked at emails she had exchanged with one of his staff members.
“He (Combs) put a wine bottle opener between his fingers and lunged at me,” she said.
“His eyes were black … I got out of there.”
Ms Ventura said she later went to Combs’ LA house to resolve the fight.
“I went in his room and he was irate he was just so angry,” she said.
Combs allegedly threatened to hurt Ventura and Mescudi and said he would release videos of her having sex with escorts at freak offs.
“When I was leaving, Sean kicked me in my back on the way out … I fell to the floor … I had a huge bruise on my back,” she said.
Ms Ventura said when she got back to the first hotel room, it had been “torn up”.
“Someone peed all over the bathroom … my clothes were everywhere … there was poop in the toilet … the furniture was everywhere,” she said.
DAY 2:
‘COMBS WOULD URINATE ON VENTURA’
Combs would allegedly urinate on Ventura, sometimes at the same time he directed a male prostitute to urinate on her during their “freak-offs,’’ she testified.
Sometimes Sean, he himself or the escort, would urinate on me,’’ she said. “Sean urinated at the same time.”
She said that once when an escort peed into her mouth during the “humiliating’’ encounters, “It was overwhelming. I choked,’’ the witness said. “Too much urine in my mouth. … Laid on a position on the floor [in a position] that I couldn’t easily get out of.”
Ventura said she put up her hands to get Diddy to stop the escort but nothing was done.
‘SEAN INTRODUCED ME TO VOYEURISM’
“Within the first year of our relationship Sean introduced to me this sexual encounter he called voyeurism where he would watch me have sexual intercourse with a third party, specifically another man,” she said.
“It basically entails the hire of an escort and setting up this experience so I could perform for Sean.”
Ms Ventura stopped to compose herself while describing the first time Combs proposed the act, saying her stomach dropped.
“I didn’t have a concept of how that would be a turn on … I was confused, nervous, but loved him very much and wanted to make him happy”.
She said she quickly decided it was something she didn’t want to do.
“Again I was just in love and wanted to make him happy,” Ms Ventura said when asked why she kept participating.
“I didn’t feel like I had much of a choice, I didn’t know what ‘no’ could be or what ‘no’ could turn into.”
‘COMPLETELY INEXPERIENCED’: 21-Y.O. VENTURA FLED DIDDY’S ADVANCES
The pair dated on and off for more than a decade after meeting when Combs signed Ventura, a model and singer, to his label Bad Boy Records for a 10 album deal.
Ms Ventura is the star witness in the federal racketeering and sex trafficking case against Combs who has pleaded not guilty to the charges against him.
The court heard the pair were first romantically involved when Combs kissed Ms Ventura in the bathroom of his Las Vegas hotel room on her 21st birthday after the MTV Music Awards.
Ms Ventura said she was young, naive and confused by the sexual advance from the powerful music boss and she ran from the hotel room crying.
ORAL SEX IN THE TRUMP HOTEL
In the months after that, she said Combs would invite her to his hotel room at the Trump hotel in New York City where he lived while his apartment was being renovated and it was there he introduced her to oral sex.
“I was just so young I didn’t even have the vocabulary for the things we talked about … (I was) just completely sexually inexperienced at the time,” she said.
Ms Ventura said she was excited about the prospect of spending time with the business mogul.
“I wanted to be around Sean for the same reasons as everyone else at the time, he was this exciting, entertaining, fun guy who also happened to have my career in his hands,” she said.
“It felt special because not a lot of people got to spend that kind of time around him.”
DIDDY GAVE VENTURA ECSTASY ON A BOAT
She said the pair first had sex when Combs hired a boat in Miami. He introduced her to drugs on that trip, giving her an ecstasy pill that she said made her feel euphoric.
Prior to that, she had smoked marijuana and drank wine, and had accidentally had ecstasy when she unknowingly drank another person’s Gatorade laced with drugs.
After the Miami trip, they started a relationship that she believed was monogamous but later learned was not.
“After Miami I really fell in love with him,” Ms Ventura said.
“We had fun, it was kind of like my first real adult relationship.”
The Manhattan federal court was shown a series of photos of the pair in the 2000s, on red carpets, in his car, at a strip club and other events.
Ms Ventura said over time, she began to experience a different side to him that was abusive and controlling but told the jury “there was still love there”.
Combs would control everything about her life, including what she wore, who she went, who she talked to and her career.
Ms Ventura said if she didn’t answer a call or text message, Combs would repeatedly call and message until she answered, or send his bodyguards and assistants to physically find her.
‘HIT HER IN THE FACE’
The violence also escalated and she said during the relationship she was hit, kicked, thrown to the ground and stomped on by Combs.
“You make the wrong face and the next thing I know I was getting hit in the face,” she said.
“If I wasn’t smiling at him the way he wanted, if I just looked a certain way…”.
She said the relationship was marked by jealousy on both sides and they were both unfaithful during the decade-long on and off romance.
“I was insanely jealous but also super young and I didn’t get it at all, I was young and jealous,” she said.
“I didn’t get that was him – as he would say, ‘I’m Puff Daddy and Puff Daddy has many women’.”
CASSIE TASKED WITH FINDING ‘BLACK MALE WITH LARGE PENIS’
Ms Ventura testified that Combs tasked her with finding the male escorts for “freak-offs”, which she initially sourced through classified companies Craigslist and Backpage.
She said she answered ads on Craigslist for male sex workers who Combs preferred to be “a black male with a large penis.”
RECOVERING FROM ‘FREAK-OFFS’ TOOK DAYS
Ms Ventura, who goes by the recording name Cassie, said despite her 10 album deal with Bad Boy Records, recording hundreds of songs and her relationship with the head of the company, Combs only allowed her to release one of the albums promised.
She said when she wasn’t recording music, she was recovering from days long “freak offs”.
“Plainly the freak-offs became a job where there was no space to do anything but recover and try to feel normal again,” Ms Ventura said.
She said the sex parties ranged anywhere from 36 to 72 hours, with the longest one lasting for four days.
Ms Ventura said recovering from sex with strangers, dehydration and the drugs took days.
DAY 1:
The mammoth trial against rapper and record producer Sean Combs, known as Diddy, P. Diddy and Puff Daddy, began in New York on Tuesday.
Hundreds of people packed into the Manhattan courthouse to witness the 55-year-old’s trial on charges of sex trafficking and racketeering.
Here are the bombshell moments from day one of the trial.
‘I SAW HIM HIT HER’: MALE ESCORT TESTIFIES
One of the men allegedly paid to have sex with Combs’ then-girlfriend Cassie Ventura was 41-year-old Daniel Philip.
Mr Philip testified that he was asked to perform as a stripper at a bachelorette party at the Gramercy Park Hotel in Manhattan but when he arrived, Ms Ventura handed him thousands of dollars and asked if he could rub baby oil on her and give her a massage.
The escort said he and Ms Ventura had sex while Combs sat in a corner and masturbated.
Mr Philip said he met with the couple multiple times after that at various hotels in New York, and at both their homes where he would have sex with Ms Ventura while Combs watched and directed them.
“He was always sitting in a corner masturbating,” Mr Philip said of Combs’ involvement.
The escort said on one occasion, Ms Ventura asked him to urinate on her while Combs watched but said he did it wrong.
“Cassie (Ms Ventura) was actually the one that asked me urinate on her,” Mr Philip said. “She asked me if I had ever done that before. She told me to do it.”
Mr Philip said his association with the couple ended because he could no longer become aroused “after the first time I saw him hit her”.
He said Combs grabbed Ms Ventura by her hair and dragged her to the bedroom.
“She was screaming,” Mr Philip said. “I could hear what sounded like him slapping her … and him (saying) ‘bitch, when I tell you to come here you come now, not later’.”
‘DEVILISH STARE’: HOTEL SECURITY GUARD ON COMBS
Israel Florez, a security guard at the InterContinental Hotel in Los Angeles and now a police officer, testified that he was in the InterContinental Hotel in Century City during the 2016 assault of Ms Ventura.
“I received a call … saying there’s a woman in distress on the sixth floor,” he said.
When asked by prosecutors who he saw on the floor, he said he observed a man and woman in the elevator lobby.
“Mr Combs – Sean Combs,” he said, before identifying Combs in the courtroom.
Combs had a “devilish” look on his face following his alleged brutal caught-on-video beating of Ventura, jurors heard.
“He was on the chair, slouched down and he [had] a blank stare. As soon as I walked out, the best way I can describe it is a devilish stare. He was just looking at me … Looking at me with no movement,” Florez testified.
Cassie looked “scared,” Florez told the jury. “She had her hoodie on. She was pretty much covered up. I couldn’t see her face.”
Combs offered Florez a “stack of money” topped with a $100-bill, telling him to “take care of this.”
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