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Casandra “Cassie” Ventura spoke publicly for the first time about the alleged sexual, physical, and emotional abuse she endured during her decade-long relationship with Sean “Diddy” Combs, going into painstaking detail about the drug-fueled “freak-offs” that have become synonymous with the accusations against Combs.
The 38-year-old R&B singer, model, and actress took the stand for two days of direct examination from Southern District of New York prosecutors in the first week of Combs’ sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy trial. The hip-hop mogul has pleaded not guilty to the five charges against him.
This week marked the first time the former celebrity couple have seen each other in person since their 2018 breakup. Supported in court by her husband, Alex Fine, her brother, and other loved ones, a composed Ventura testified Tuesday and Wednesday about the alleged ritualistic and “choreographed” sexual encounters that she “hated” but felt had no choice but to comply.
Ventura told jurors that after her first freak-off at age 22 — a time that she described herself as “naive” and “enamored” with her label boss Combs — the days-long, “humiliating” sexual encounters with Combs and male escorts occurred almost weekly, sometimes for up to four days. Ventura testified the male escorts were paid thousands of dollars in cash each time, and their payment was contingent on the completion of their performance during the sexual encounter.
She alleged that Combs controlled nearly every aspect of her daily life and that she was fearful of making him angry, which could result in physical abuse that would often leave “traces” of the violence, Ventura said.
When it came to testifying about participating in freak-offs, Ventura — who is more than eight months pregnant with her third child — briefly became overwhelmed with emotion and cried when trying to explain why she continued to engage in freak-offs and the overall toll they took on her.
She concluded her testimony by explaining what led her to come forward in the first place, revealing that she struggled with suicide ideation in 2023 and sought professional help. “I don’t think, after all those years of begging for, like, sorries, and just for himto actually recognize the pain … that he put me through,” Ventura said of trying to get Combs to “understand” what transpired during their relationship.
Following Ventura’s direct examination, Combs’ all-star defense team plans to question Ventura on Thursday and Friday.
Here are 13 of the biggest takeaways from Ventura’s testimony.
1. Inside the Alleged “Freak-Offs”
Ventura walked jurors through every step of the highly ritualistic “freak-offs” that she claimed Combs orchestrated and controlled. Although the locations varied, Ventura testified, the setup was usually similar: The hotel suites and personal bedrooms were stocked with bottles of baby oil, lubricant, and strong-smelling mood candles. In later years, Ventura said the lighting was switched to LED-colored lights used in recording studios.
The sexual encounters with male escorts followed a pattern, Ventura said, with the pair rubbing baby oil on each other until they were “glistening.” Touching and massaging came next, according to Ventura, followed by oral sex and then intercourse.“It was his fantasy,” Ventura said. “He was controlling the whole situation. He was directing it. He was doing the lighting. He was telling us where to be, what to say, how to act in the room.”
Sometimes, Ventura said, she’d try to “speed up” the events because she just wanted to be alone with Combs. “I, more often than not, would just want to be able to get to the other room where we could just spend time with each other alone,” she said.
2. Combs’ “Controlling” Nature
Ventura said she signed to Combs’ record label as a “naive” 19-year-old, and by the time they entered into a relationship, she was “enamored” with him. Ventura claimed that Combs asserted dominance both over her career and personal life.
Combs allegedly directed Ventura on her hairstyle and the color she should paint her nails, even suggesting certain body piercings. “Sean controlled a lot of my life, whether it was career, the way I dressed, like, everything,” Ventura testified. “I just didn’t feel like I had much say in it at that time being a really super young, naive, total people-pleaser.”
Regarding her living situation, Combs paid for nearly all of Ventura’s apartments in New York City and Los Angeles — all convenient distances from his residence.
Despite signing a 10-album deal with Combs’ label Bad Boy, Ventura only released one studio album. Ventura said she was constantly recording new music, but it wasn’t getting released. Lots of the songs she recorded “just didn’t see the light of day,” she testified.
Venture said that Combs wanted to know where she was at all times, and if he couldn’t get a hold of her by phone immediately, Combs would incessantly call until she responded. Other times, Combs allegedly sent his team of security guards to physically track down Ventura. She claimed he’d often take away her car and phone, and kick her out of her apartment as a form of punishment.
3. Allegations of Frequent Physical Abuse
Ventura claimed Combs began physically abusing her by the time she was 22 years old. “He would mash me in my head, knock me over, drag me, kick me, um, stomp me if I was down,” she testified.
She said the abuse happened “too frequently,” resulting in “knots in my forehead, busted lips, swollen lips, black eyes, the whites of my eyes would be red, um, bruises all over my body.”
Ventura said that the physical beatings could stem from a shift in Combs’ mood. “I make the wrong face, and the next thing I knew, I was getting hit in the face,” she testified. Ventura said she was seriously concerned about potentially setting Combs off and would go to great lengths to avoid making him angry.
4. The Mental Toll of Freak-Offs
During her multiple hours of testimony, Ventura broke down when she tried to explain her rationale for continuing to participate in freak-offs with Combs.“I just didn’t want anything bad to happen,” Ventura said, clarifying that “anything bad” could be Combs “being violent” with her as well as him finding another woman willing to do freak-offs with him. “When you really care about somebody, and you’re in love with them, you don’t want to disappoint them,” she added.
But continuing to participate in the freak-offs, Ventura testified, took a detrimental toll on her mental health. “I just felt, like, it was all I was good for to him,” she said shakily. “I just felt pretty horrible about myself. I felt disgusting. I was humiliated. I didn’t have those words to put together at the time, like, how horrible I really felt.”
5. Male Escorts’ Payment Was Contingent on Performance
Ventura alleged that the male escorts were typically paid a few thousand dollars at the end of freak-offs. She said that some men had trouble maintaining an erection. “It was actually pretty frequent with people that we didn’t know well,” Ventura said. “They would express … every time Sean would talk, it would throw them off, or if hemoved a candle, just was distracting.”
Those who were unable to perform in the way Combs expected, Ventura claimed, “definitely didn’t get paid the normal amount” for the encounters.
6. Making Sure Escorts Were “Safe”
Ventura claimed Combs directed her to hire the male escorts for freak-offs and give them a spiel about the situation when they arrived at the hotel suite or one of their homes.
She said she was responsible for ensuring the person was “safe.” Ventura clarified that it meant that Combs “wanted me to clarify if the person was a cop,” she said. “At first, I didn’t understand, and I learned later why.”
7. “Humiliating” Sexual Acts
Ventura testified that Combs made her and the male escorts perform sexual acts that she found “humiliating,” including having freak-offs while she was menstruating and men urinating on her.
“It was disgusting,” Ventura said. “It was too much. It was overwhelming. I choked. There couldn’t have been anything on my face that was reading that I wanted to be doing that. I just laid on the floor in a position that I couldn’t easily get out of.”
8. Combs’ Alleged Threats to Kid Cudi
Ventura testified she began a brief relationship with musician Kid Cudi (real name Scott Mescudi) around December 2011, when she and Combs “were not in the greatest place” in their relationship.
However, Ventura said she was still seeing Combs during this on-off period, and during a freak-off, Combs went through her phone and discovered her relationship with Mescudi. He went ballistic, Ventura said. “I just remember him putting like a wine bottle opener between his fingers and, like, lunging at me … his eyes blacked out, super angry,” Ventura said.
Ventura said an irate Combs allegedly threatened to release freak-off videos and to harm both Mescudi and Ventura. Ultimately, Ventura said she ended up breaking things off with Mescudi around Christmas 2011 to protect him. “Sean said to me, before I left L.A., that he was going to hurt the both of us,” Ventura testified. “I took that in my mind, like, if I stay in this situation, we both will be hurt. If I don’t, then no one will be.”
Ventura said she eventually returned to Combs, who was still seething about Mescudi. “When we were out of the country, [Combs mentioned] that Scott’s car would be blown up. He wanted his friends to be there to see it.” Mescudi would later confirm, after Ventura filed her lawsuit, that his car exploded in his driveway in February 2012.
9. Threats to Leak Freak-off Videos
During arguments, Ventura claimed Combs would often threaten to leak freak-off videos of her. “It was just a pretty common thing,” she testified. “One time, I dated someone else, and that is what it was all about: ‘I’m going to put out two embarrassing videos of you.’ He just wanted to hurt me.”
Ventura said she once believed that she had wiped certain freak-off videos from Combs’ devices only for him to play them for her on his laptop during a commercial flight back to New York. Ventura said she was “terrified” that Combs would release the explicit videos.
Even after their break up in 2018, Ventura testified that Combs lorded the explicit tapes over her. During a fight over Ventura’s then-partner Fine, Combs texted Ventura in March 2019, “You will not be threatening me. You have too many iPads full of skeletons,” according to evidence presented at trial.
10. Suicidal Ideation
Five years after Combs and Ventura broke up, the singer said she began having “horrible” flashbacks following a music video that she filmed in 2023. Returning home from the shoot “super” late, Ventura broke down. “My kids were asleep … my husband was there,” Ventura said shortly before reaching for a tissue. “I just remember telling him, like, you can do this without me. Like, you don’t need me here anymore.”
“I couldn’t take the pain that I was in anymore, and so I just tried to walk out the front door into traffic, and my husband would not let me,” Ventura said.
11. Alleged Rape in 2018
Towards the end of their relationship in 2018, Ventura testified that things were rocky between her and Combs. At one point, she wedged a sizable kitchen knife in the door handle to keep Combs from entering her home. “I was getting a lot of unannounced visits from Sean where he was angry and trying to kill two birds with one stone: to lock it and have a weapon.”
Following a conversation over dinner in Malibu for what Ventura thought was a “closure conversation,” Ventura claimed Combs raped her on the floor of her living room. “I just remember crying and saying no,” Ventura said, explaining earlier that at the time, she was dating her now-husband, Alex Fine. “But it was very fast.”
Afterward, Ventura said, Combs just “got up and left.”
12. $20 Million Settlement
Twenty-four hours after Ventura filed her bombshell sex trafficking and sexual abuse lawsuit against Combs in November 2024, the parties reached an undisclosed settlement agreement.During her testimony, Ventura revealed that Combs paid her $20 million to settle the lawsuit.
13. Why Cassie Came Forward
Ventura said she chose to come forward because she was tired of the “shame, the guilt” that stemmed from her relationship with Combs. “He brought the concept [of freak-offs] to me when I was 22,” Ventura testified through tears. “I would do absolutely anything for him, and I did. And it never stopped.”
At the conclusion of her direct examination, she added, “I can’t carry this anymore,” she said. “What’s right is right, and what’s wrong is wrong. And I’m here to do the right thing.”
This post was updated on Wednesday, May 14 at 11:30 p.m. to reflect Ventura’s second day of testimony.
