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” marathon group sex sessions.
Ventura’s bombshell testimony underpins much of the prosecution’s case against Combs, who is alleged to have used violence and blackmail to manipulate women over many years.
Ventura 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.”
She described Combs urinating on her, or him instructing one of the numerous sex workers he engaged to do so, and paying the escorts, almost always men, thousands of dollars 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 establishment’s charging sizable cleaning and repair bills.
Asked if she enjoyed anything about the curated encounters that Combs allegedly instructed her to coordinate, Ventura wept openly, answering that “the time spent with (Combs)” was enjoyable.
“Sean would want me to clarify if the person was a cop,” she said of screening male escorts to evade law enforcement on Combs’s behalf.
Combs’s defense team said 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 ecstasy or cocaine, and that the “drugs honestly helped” her stay awake for days on end as demanded by Combs.
“Sean controlled a lot of my life — whether it was (my) career, the way I dressed,” she said.
‘He would mash me’
Ventura, who is heavily pregnant and will take regular breaks from her graphic testimony that could last several days, said “Sean controlled a lot of my life — whether it was (my) career, the way I dressed.”
“He would mash me in my head, knock me over, drag me, kick me, stomp me on the head if I was down,” she said, her voice shaking at points.
In a hotel surveillance clip from March 2016 shown to jurors Monday, Combs is apparently seen brutally beating and dragging Ventura — widely known as “Cassie” — down a hallway.
Former security officer at a Los Angeles InterContinental hotel, Israel Florez, told the court Monday that he was first on the scene after the 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 heard of the famed artist’s explosive outbursts and an attempt to preserve his own reputation and celebrity through bribery.
But the 55-year-old’s defense team insisted while some of his behavior was questionable — at times constituting domestic abuse — it did meet the evidence needed to prove racketeering and sex trafficking charges.
Combs has pleaded not guilty on all counts, including the racketeering charge that the hip-hop pioneer led a sex crime ring that included drug-fueled sex parties by use of force, threats and violence.
Prosecutor Emily Johnson told jurors Combs used a web of companies and employees to attend to his desires — a key plank of the racketeering allegations.
Combs’s defense lawyer Teny Geragos told jurors the “case is about love, jealousy and infidelity and money.”
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.”
“Being a willing participant in your own sex life is not sex trafficking,” she said, adding that the defense would admit there was domestic violence — but that Combs is not charged with such crimes.
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.
