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The second woman allegedly sex trafficked by Sean Combs began testifying at the hip-hop mogul’s criminal trial Thursday, just months after she first started speaking with prosecutors but more than a year after she purportedly told Combs that reading Casandra “Cassie” Ventura’s graphic lawsuit was like reading her own “sexual trauma.”
The woman, appearing under the pseudonym Jane, is listed as Victim-2 in the Southern District of New York’s sex trafficking and racketeering case against Combs. Prosecutors previously kept much of Jane’s story under wraps, but they allege Combs fed her large quantities of drugs and coerced her into highly choreographed, days-long “freak-offs” with male escorts between 2021 and 2024.
During her emotional testimony in the federal courtroom in lower Manhattan, Jane walked jurors through the start of her allegedly tortured relationship with the music mogul. She recalled first meeting Combs in 2020 while he was dating one of her friends. Combs purportedly paid for the women’s trip to Miami, hosted them at his home and quickly made it clear he was interested in Jane. “He was really charming, really nice,” Jane testified. “I was already drawn to him pretty instantly.” Exchanging numbers, the two quickly established nicknames. Combs was “Ernie” and she was “Bert,” a reference to the Sesame Street best friends. “There was a little bit of flirting going on,” she recalled.
Jane said Combs pursued her after that. She held him at bay at first, but then her friend moved on with someone else. Jane jumped at the chance when Combs invited her back to Miami in early 2021. Their first date lasted five days.
“I was pretty head over heels for Sean,” Jane testified. She later traveled with Combs on a two-week trip to Turks and Caicos and the Bahamas, where they did drugs alone together for the first time. Jane said Combs gave her Ecstasy, something she had only tried twice before. “Here, take this,” Combs allegedly prompted, holding out his hand, “It’ll be more fun.” The drug triggered a bad reaction, causing Jane to fall on the beach while screaming. “It just hit me,” Jane said. “My body was almost convulsing.”
Jane said Combs’ former chief of staff, Kristina Khorram, and his butler ushered her into a shower to calm her down. She recalled taking Ecstasy with Combs about 12 times during the entire trip and said Combs wired her $10,000 afterward, which she considered compensation for missing out on work as a model and brand influencer.
Jane told jurors she continued dating Combs until his arrest last September. She said they exchanged proclamations of love early on, though Combs was upfront about wanting an open relationship. She agreed he could date other women because she loved him, she explained. “I was okay with it,” she testified. “I just wanted to see Sean, so I was monogamous.”
From the start, Combs regularly plied Jane with multiple drugs including Ecstasy, cocaine, and ketamine, while he simultaneously consumed large amounts himself during their sexual encounters, she said. Combs also asked Jane to wear “very high stripper shoes” and liked to use red lights and pornography playing in the background to set the mood, she recalled.
Jane broke down crying as she described her first alleged freak-off with Combs, which she knew by the names “debauchery” or “hotel nights.” She said they already had been up together doing drugs and having sex for more than 12 hours when Combs proposed extending their “fantasy” talk to the real world. She said he quickly booked a male escort and whisked her off to a hotel in May 2021. She recalled seeing assistants frantically setting up the suite and feeling “nervous” as she started to dance in front of the escort while Combs started masturbating. Jane said that when she requested the escort wear a condom, Combs stepped in and said it wasn’t necessary, though he later relented. After she had sex with the escort, she and Combs spent more time alone together, she recalled.
Jane described feeling “exhilarated” after her first freak-off because she believed it would be a one-time experience testing boundaries and breaking taboos. Instead, it placed her on a treacherous path, she testified. “That night just opened, like, a Pandora’s box in the relationship,” Jane told the jury. “It just completely set the tone for our relationship moving forward. … I felt it was a door I was unable to shut for the remainder of the relationship.”
Jane said her hotel nights with Combs were frequent after that, comprising about 90 percent of the times they had sex. She claimed they regularly used more than two dozen bottles of baby oil during the extended, highly repetitive marathons, so they covered hotel furniture with sheets and blankets to soak up the excess. Jane estimated the nights could last anywhere from 24 to 30 hours, with multiple rounds of performances and sometimes more than one male escort.
Jane started to live her life on standby, she said, with Combs demanding hotel nights on a whim, and Khorram or another staffer booking her travel. She became “consumed” by the dynamic, feeling she always had to be ready with the grooming Combs preferred, including straight hair, light nails, and tanned skin. With little control over her own schedule, Jane said her content creator and modeling career took a drastic hit. When she floated the idea of modeling on OnlyFans to gain more financial independence, Combs allegedly dismissed it.
Jane said Combs eventually helped her move to Los Angeles from the East Coast, around April 2023. She recalled receiving an “allowance” of $10,000 a month, which she used entirely on housing. Combs would sporadicly gift her extra funds, like $5,000 in cash “just because,” or wire her larger amounts, including $20,000 for new furniture, Jane explained.
When she tried to push back on the hotel nights, saying she only wanted to have sex with Combs, he threatened to break up with her and revoke his financial support, she testified. Jane said she felt frustrated and “obligated” to “perform these nights for him.”
Jane testified for an hour and a half before court ended for the day. She’s due back Friday morning, with her time on the stand expected to last into the middle of next week. Prosecutors previously claimed Combs’ manipulation of Jane went beyond financial control into threats and physical violence. They’ve said Combs busted down doors to get to Jane, dragged her by her hair and kicked her while she was curled up in a ball on the ground. (Ventura previously testified that Combs used threats and physical violence to coerce her into hundreds of freak-offs during their 11-year relationship that ended for good in 2018.)
“The defendant continued asking Jane to have freak-offs and promising that if she did, they would spend quality time together, they would go on dates together, they would go on trips,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Emily Johnson said on the first day of Combs’ trial last month. “That was what Jane wanted more than anything, a real relationship … But even though the defendant promised her quality time and trips, he never delivered. Those were just lies he told her to get more nights in dark hotel rooms with escorts.”
Prosecutors have indicated they only began speaking with Jane in January, after they uncovered text messages she sent Combs in the days after Ventura’s lawsuit was filed in November 2023. “It makes me sick how three solid pages, word for word, is exactly my experiences and my anguish,” she texted Combs. Combs allegedly responded by gaslighting Jane and making a vague reference to her financial support, so their dating relationship continued into 2024, prosecutors said.
In her opening statement, Johnson told jurors they would hear recordings of phone calls in which Combs called Jane after Ventura sued. “You will hear him try to manipulate Jane into saying she wanted to have freak-offs. You will hear him interrupt Jane when she pushes back,” Johnson said.
Under his indictment, Combs is accused of threatening to release explicit videos of Jane, supplying her with narcotics to keep her awake and compliant, and using physical violence to trap her in his abusive dynamic. During one purported incident, Combs allegedly kicked down four of Jane’s doors and lifted her off the ground in a chokehold. Later that night, Combs allegedly beat Jane again, punching her in the face, kicking her on the ground, and dragging her by her hair before forcing her to have a freak-off.
“You’re not going to fuck up my night,” Combs allegedly told Jane, according to the government’s opening statement.
In the defense’s dueling opening statement, Combs’ lawyer, Teny Geragos, sought to set Jane apart from Ventura. She told jurors that by the time Combs started seeing Jane, “he was more upfront about his dating life,” including the fact that he was dating multiple women. Geragos said Jane also was older and more mature than Ventura, “living her own life in a different state raising her child.”
Geragos said that after Jane’s first experience with a freak-off, “she began to do everything possible to make these nights incredible for Combs.” Geragos suggested Jane “made the choice” to engage in freak-offs “out of love.”
“She was desperate to spend time with him, to be with him, and ultimately, to give him something none of the other girlfriends that he was dating at the time were giving him. She will tell you that she tried many times to change the tenor of the relationship from one of a purely sexual nature to something maybe deeper or more meaningful,” Geragos said. She blamed the alleged violence in the couple’s “toxic and dysfunctional” relationship on Jane’s “jealousy.”
In her opening, Geragos said Combs was simply interested in a “swingers lifestyle,” which she described as a predilection for consensual “threesomes by adults.” She told jurors it was not their job “to judge him for his sexual preferences.” She said the government has the burden of proving Combs coerced the women, but the evidence will show the women willingly stayed with Combs out of love and because he was a “wealthy rapper” who gave them generous financial support.
Geragos acknowledged that Combs was violent in the video showing him kicking and dragging Ventura in a hotel hallway in 2016, but she said “domestic violence is not sex trafficking.”
More than two dozen witnesses already have testified at Combs’ trial, which is now in its fourth week. Prosecutors have called multiple former assistants, alleged male escorts, and even Scott Mescudi, the musician and actor known as Kid Cudi, to support their allegations Combs used his wealth, influence, and inner circle to carry out crimes aimed at fulfilling his sexual desires and protecting his reputation.
