By MICHAEL R. SISAK and LARRY NEUMEISTER Associated Press
NEW YORK (AP) — The R&B singer Cassie testified Wednesday that Sean “Diddy” Combs raped her when she ended their decade-long relationship, after he locked her in a life of physical abuse by threatening to release degrading sexual videos of her.
Addressing the Manhattan courtroom for a second day in Combs’ federal sex trafficking trial, Cassie said Combs forced his way into her Los Angeles apartment and raped her on the living room floor after she said she was breaking up with him.
Cassie also said she didn’t feel she could refuse Combs’ demands for her to have “hundreds” of encounters with male sex workers — which he watched and controlled for hours and even days — because he would make her “look like a slut” if he made the videos public.
“I feared for my career. I feared for my family. It’s just embarrassing. It’s horrible and disgusting. No one should do that to anyone,” said Cassie, whose legal name is Casandra Ventura.
Prosecutors showed the jury five still images from the sex videos on Wednesday. Cassie said the images depicted her at various stages of the encounters Combs called “freak-offs.” One juror’s eyes widened. Another shook his head from side to side.
She sued Combs in 2023, accusing him of years of physical and sexual abuse. Within hours, the suit was settled for $20 million — a figure Cassie disclosed for the first time Wednesday — but dozens of similar legal claims followed from other women.
Prosecutors accuse Combs of exploiting his status as a powerful music executive to violently force Cassie and other women to take part in sexual encounters. He is charged with crimes including racketeering and sex trafficking by force, fraud or coercion. Several other accusers are set to testify.
Combs denies all of the allegations. His attorneys acknowledge he could be violent, but say the sex he and others engaged in was consensual and that nothing he did amounted to a criminal enterprise.
Combs’ lawyers were expected to begin cross-examining Cassie on Thursday, when they will get the chance to challenge her credibility or poke holes in her account of what happened.
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.
Cassie exposes the dark side of a celebrity relationship
Cassie’s testimony is exposing the dark underside of a relationship that, for years, played out publicly in pictures of the couple smiling on red carpets and celebrity events. She said she met Combs in 2005, when she was 19 and he was 37. Combs signed her to a 10-year contract with his Bad Boy Records label. Within a few years, they started dating, Cassie said.
They were photographed in 2016 attending the premiere of the film “The Perfect Match,” only two days after Combs beat and kicked Cassie at a Los Angeles hotel — an attack captured on security camera footage. After the footage was leaked last year, Combs apologized. Jurors were shown that footage as well as photos of the couple at the premier.
Cassie, now 38, calm and poised after an emotional first day of testimony, said she used makeup to cover bruises and wore sunglasses to hide a black eye for the premiere. She said she sneaked into a popcorn closet at the movie theater to switch dresses for an after-party so bruises on her legs wouldn’t be visible.
On another occasion in 2013, while she was packing to go to Drake’s music festival in Canada, Cassie said Combs scuffled with her friends and threw her into a bed frame. She sustained a “pretty significant gash” above her left eye. Combs’ security personnel brought her to a plastic surgeon in Beverly Hills to get the wound stitched up, she said.
Afterward, she said she texted Combs a photo of her injured face and wrote: “So you can remember.” Combs replied: “You don’t know when to stop. You pushed it too far. And continued to push. Sad.”
The Associated Press does not typically name people who say they have been sexually abused unless they come forward publicly, as Cassie has.
Combs accused of a history of violence
Cassie testified about several other violent episodes. Early in their relationship in 2007, she said he repeatedly hit her and knocked her to the floor of a vehicle with a blow to her head. In 2011, when he learned she started dating rapper Kid Cudi, she said Combs lunged at her with a corkscrew and kicked her in the back.
After the 2011 attack, she said she lied to her mother at Christmas that it was the first time Combs hit her.
“I couldn’t hurt her like that,” Cassie testified. “And it was terrifying. It’s not normal, constantly being bruised up by the person you love — who says they love you.”
Cassie also testified that she saw Combs pull one of her friends back over the railing of a balcony in Los Angeles. She said she saw him hit a different friend of hers in the head with a hammer.
Cassie said she was experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder before ending her relationship with Combs in 2018, and was blacking out and sleepwalking.
Cassie says she had a breakdown in 2023
Cassie testified that her life reached a climatic moment in early 2023 when she had “horrible flashbacks” as she was shooting a music video. She said she went home after the video shoot and her two kids were asleep but her husband was there. Cassie said she remembered “telling him you can do this without me. You don’t need me here anymore.”
With that, Cassie said she couldn’t take the pain anymore and “tried to walk out the front door into traffic and my husband would not let me.” Weeks later, she was undergoing rehab and trauma therapy.
Asked why she’s testifying at Combs’ criminal trial, she said: “I can’t carry this anymore. I can’t carry the shame, the guilt.”
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Associated Press journalists Julie Walker in New York and Dave Collins in Hartford, Connecticut, contributed to this report.