Testimony during day 3 of the Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs sex trafficking trial on Wednesday was the testimony of Cassie Ventura, a woman living in a hell from which she could not escape. Combs is charged with racketeering, conspiracy, sex trafficking and transportation to engage in prostitution, and, if found guilty on all counts, he faces life in prison. The former hip-hop star has pleaded not guilty to the charges. Ventura was the only witness called to the stand on Wednesday, detailing the sordid life Combs dragged her through, a life that included beatings, drug abuse and sex with escorts. She told the jurors when she fought back against the physical violence, Combs would make “it worse for myself." "I feel like it would escalate the fight more and make it worse for myself," she said. "It would make him stronger and make him want to push harder." After one encounter, Combs tried to guilt her. “You're going to abandon me all alone,” he texted once. "Call me now, I got six kids. Pls call me," later texting, "I'm getting arrested." The police came to her door, but Ventura refused to name Combs as she answered their questions because she wanted to protect him, she said in court. .“Just in that moment I didn’t want to hurt him that way," she said. "Just too much going on. It was a lot for me in that moment, and I wasn’t ready.” In earlier testimony, Ventura said Combs forced her into “freak offs” a sexual encounter he considered voyeurism. He would watch her having intercourse with hired escorts and “perform for him (Combs)". On Wednesday, she said Combs ruined her 29th birthday by pressuring her repeatedly to have a "freak-off" with him. “I told him I wanted to stay out and celebrate with my friends. In my mind, I didn’t want to have the burden of doing that, that night,” but Combs "pulled me out" of the festivities "so many times that I just gave up," she told jurors. During the trial, a former porn star, Jonathan Oddi, who was in a shootout with cops in the lobby of the Trump National Golf Club, was in court and identified by Ventura as one of the escorts hired by Combs for sexual encounters. Oddi was one of 13 escorts Ventura identified in court, bringing the total for the trial to 16. .Ventura took to opioids to numb her feelings after the ‘freak offs’ and help her come down from party drugs MDMA and ecstasy which she said she “relied on heavily." Prosecutor Emily Johnson showed the court photographs of the aftermath of a Combs’ attack on Ventura during the infamous 2016 beating in a Los Angeles hotel, including the remains of a broken vase Combs threw at Ventura. Combs pressured her to go with him to sex clubs, saying it would be fun, even though it scared her. "I was always terrified, and I would drink quite a bit," she said of going to the clubs. “It wasn’t an experience I was into. It wasn’t my thing.” She spoke of waking up "nude in the shower" following a drug-fueled ‘freak-off’. “At that time, we were taking GHB," she said, referring to the party drug. "On G you can go into a G-hole and I blacked out." "I woke up nude in the shower and Dave and Sean were just freaking out outside the bath,” adding Dave was a male escort Combs hired for the ‘freak-offs’. .She testified about another assault by Combs in 2013 before leaving for Drake's annual OVO Festival in Toronto. She was seen at the festival with rapper French Montana, with her hair styled to cover an injury on her forehead. Combs, she said, started yelling about her sleeping on the couch instead of packing and two of her friends “jumped on his back” as Combs attacked her. “When he threw me down, I cut my eyebrows on the corner of my bed,” she said. The jury was shown a photo of a blooded gash on Ventura’s left eyebrow. Combs later told security to take her to a plastic surgeon in Beverley Hills to suture the gash, Ventura testified. She texted Combs a picture of the wound and wrote, “so you can remember.” .For the balance of the trial on Wednesday, court heard of the many other times Combs beat and denigrated Ventura and how helpless she felt. “I didn’t have the resources I needed to get out and move, to get out and not have anybody stop me,” she said. “I understood Sean’s capabilities, his access to guns, and the threats that he made prior to that.” But, in 2023, Ventura’s fortunes changed and she took control, writing a book to make Combs understand the pain she was in. “I didn’t think he understood. I don’t think after all those years of begging for sorrys and for him to actually recognize the pain that he put me through, I just wanted him to understand,” she said. She sent the book to Combs through a lawyer, telling him he could buy the rights to it for US$30 million. “I wanted to be compensated for the time, the pain, the many, many years of having to fix my life,” she said. The US$30 million figure was picked out of the air to get Combs’ attention. “I just picked a number that I felt l would alert him”, she told the court Later, she asked a Combs’ employee if he had read the book and was told that “it hadn’t been taken seriously.” In November 2023, she filed a lawsuit. Ventura testified that she agreed to settle with Combs and his companies for $20 million, 24 hours after filing the lawsuit. The trial continues Thursday with even more grueling testimony as the defence will cross-examine Ventura.
