During the trial of Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs in New York City on May 14th, Cassie Ventura said she “didn’t want to live anymore” due to PTSD and claimed Combs paid her $20 million in a settlement agreement in 2023.
Ventura began her testimony on May 13th and is expected to be at the stand for several more days. Combs is charged with five counts of sex trafficking, racketeering, and sexual abuse. He has pleaded not guilty to all of the charges.
Earlier in the testimony, which is scheduled to last more days, Ventura detailed ‘freak-offs’, her “off-and-on” addiction to opiates, and testified that she sometimes had persistent urinary tract infections when she and Combs were having frequent ‘freak-offs’. She called the pain of enduring the activities during this illness “horrible.”
Ventura was probed by the prosecution on the end of her on-off relationship with Combs and revealed details of a dinner they shared in Malibu in 2018, which she attended for “closure” reasons. While the meal was “romantic” and “nice”, Ventura testified it took a dark turn when Combs drove her back to her Hollywood apartment, “He raped me in my living room”, she alleged in court. “I remember crying, saying no, but it was very fast.”
She claimed his eyes went “black” and he ejaculated inside her despite her screaming “no” before he left the apartment.
After the alleged rape, Ventura said they had consensual sex on another occasion, explaining, “We had been together for over 10 years. You don’t just turn feelings off that way.” Before the trial, they were last in the same room for Kim Porter’s funeral in 2018.
Ventura also said that in 2023, before the allegations against Combs surfaced, she was “spinning out” and says she “didn’t want to be alive anymore” due to “horrible PTSD flashbacks”. The singer told the court amid bursting into tears, “I tried to walk out the front door into traffic, and my husband would not let me.” She later began to seek trauma therapy and rehab for drug problems.
She also wrote a book detailing her experience of the, which she claims to have sent to Combs’ team, but “it wasn’t taken seriously” and she “wanted to be compensated for the many, many years”.
Ventura then filed a civil lawsuit against Combs in November 2023, which was settled less than 24 hours later for $20 million. Upon her involvement in the federal trial, she told the court, “I’m here to do the right thing. I can’t carry this anymore … the shame, the guilt.”
The trial is set to continue on May 15th.
Combs has pleaded not guilty to all of the charges.
