“I Just Remember Crying and Saying No”

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When Cassandra “Cassie” Ventura decided to end her relationship with Sean “Diddy” Combs in 2018, it seemed like the breakup might be amicable. They went out to dinner for a “closure conversation,” she testified on May 14 at Diddy’s Manhattan federal sex-trafficking trial. “At that time, he was trying to convince me to go to Burning Man,” Cassie recalled. Cassie described Diddy as “really nice, playful, laughing” during dinner and said the evening had “romantic vibes” that felt “normal” compared to their tumultuous years together. Cassie alleged that Diddy took her home to her apartment and the two went inside together “per usual; nothing weird.” 

“And then he raped me in my living room,” Cassie alleged. “I just remember crying and saying ‘no.’” Despite her tears and nos, Diddy did not relent. “He continued and finished,” Cassie claimed, before he “got up and left.” 

Diddy’s alleged rape was just one of the many horrors that Cassie described during her time on the stand. She broke into tears after recalling how trauma prompted her to consider suicide, saying, “I couldn’t take the pain anymore.” She told jurors that Diddy’s insatiable demands caused frequent infections that resisted treatment — and that she tried to “escape” with narcotics. Cassie’s rape allegation echoes the claims made in her 2023 lawsuit against him. The suit settled for 20 million one day after she filed.

All the while, Cassie braced herself for Combs to explode in a rage at any moment, recalling that he lunged at her with a bottle opener after learning that she was seeing Kid Cudi. “His eyes blacked out,” Cassie testified. Diddy allegedly told Cassie that Cudi’s “car would be blown up.” Diddy even “wanted [Cudi’s] friends to see his car blown up in the driveway,” she claimed. 

Earlier in the day, Cassie, who is eight and a half months pregnant, said she would routinely get urinary-tract infections from “Freak Offs” — drug-fueled events where Combs would direct her to have sex with male escorts while he watched and masturbated.“When we were having frequent Freak Offs,” she alleged, “sometimes they were back to back. I was actually doing the Freak Offs with the infection.” Cassie said the UTIs were very painful and she tried her best to get over them by drinking water and taking cranberry supplements. “It got to the point where Cipro didn’t work anymore,” Cassie said, referring to the powerful antibiotic. “Occasionally, I would get sores on my tongue from the Freak Offs, [from] taking drugs, substances, friction in my mouth,” she claimed. Cassie added that she developed an “ongoing, off-and-on addiction with opiates.” She would take them to come down from MDMA and ecstasy. “Opiates made me feel numb, which is why I relied on them so heavily,” Cassie said. Prosecutor Emily Johnson asked Cassie why she wanted to feel numb. “I didn’t want to feel what was actually going on,” Cassie said. “It was just an escape for me.” At one point, Cassie said that ketamine was her “preferred drug” during Freak Offs because “it was very dissociative.” 

Cassie also described several instances where Diddy allegedly threatened to leak videos of the Freak Offs when he was upset at her. The threats amounted to “I’m going to put out embarrassing videos of you.” She feared for her career and family. “It’s horrible and disgusting,” she said. “No one should do that to anyone.” If the recordings came out, Cassie said, “they would [make] me look like a slut.” Jurors were shown seven still images from video recordings of Freak Offs. Johnson went image by image, asking Cassie to speak generally about the photos and identify various escorts mentioned in prior testimony. The images will not be visible to the public or the press. Several jurors had apparent reactions to the images. One male juror raised his eyebrows. At least one panelist scribbled notes. Other than the jury, the only people in court who could see the photos were parties involved in the case. Diddy’s team was given copies of these photos in a black binder. He leaned over to look at them. Cassie told jurors she stopped trying to fight back out of fear — she said she felt doing so “could escalate the fight more, could make it worse for myself, just make it more violent, male him stronger, push me harder in that situation.” 

Cassie’s account started with hours of chilling testimony where she described suffering through years of coerced encounters with male escorts. Cassie, who is eight and a half months pregnant, told jurors on Tuesday that Diddy’s extreme sexual appetites left her “humiliated” — and that his demands turned her life into a cycle of drugged-up “Freak Off” parties that could span days. “The Freak Offs became a job where there was no space to do anything else but to recover and just try to feel normal again.” On day one of Cassie’s testimony, the singer alleged that Diddy controlled her life to meet his demands — and force compliance. She said Diddy, obsessed with her appearance, demanded that her nails be painted white, or as French tips, when she participated in the parties he called Freak Offs. He suggested breast implants at one point. “If I wasn’t doing my nails, I was getting a tan. If I wasn’t getting a tan, I was getting something else. The physical prep was for the Freak Offs — I had to look a certain way during Freak Offs.” He suggested that Cassie pierce her nipples. Cassie got them pierced. She also got a “hood” piercing, near her clitoris, at “Sean’s suggestion.”

She also alleged that Diddy maintained control in their decade together with routine physical abuse — and Cassie’s fear that he could release videos of these encounters if she didn’t comply. “It turned into the fact that there were actually blackmail materials to — to basically make me feel like, if I didn’t do it, that it would be hung over my head in that way, or that these things would become public,” Cassie said early on in her testimony. As for the physical abuse, Cassie recalled, “He would mash me in my head, knock me over, um, drag me, kick me, stomp me in the head, if I was down.” She also felt that Diddy wielded financial power over her, threatening to take away her car, home, and jewelry. 

Federal prosecutors contend that Combs forced women to partake in Freak Off parties, which they have described as “elaborate and produced sex performances” with male escorts that Combs arranged, directed, masturbated during, and often electronically recorded.” They said that these encounters were enabled by drugs — which he provided — so that his victims could keep engaging in sex despite their physical exhaustion. Diddy has pleaded not guilty. His defense will cross-examine Cassie starting Thursday.