Inside court as Cassie gave harrowing testimony in Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs trial | ITV News
The focus of the second day of Sean “Diddy” Combs’s criminal trial was the Government’s star witness, singer Casandra Ventura, known as Cassie.
Ventura spent five hours telling the jury about her submission to an “impossible to count” number of sessions of sex with strangers.
Here are my three takeaways from Cassie’s first day:
Harassment, Romance, and Ruin
Combs signed Cassie to his Bad Boy Records label in 2006, when she was 19.
“Sean controlled a lot of my life, whether it was career, the way I dressed, everything,” Cassie told the jury.
She described herself then as “super young, naive, total people pleaser.”
Their relationship evolved into romance on a 21st birthday trip with Combs and friends to Las Vegas.
“He kissed me in the bathroom” of his hotel suite, Cassie said, adding that she was “confused,” cried, and ran off.
But soon they were meeting in hotels. When Combs took her on a weekend in Miami, they had sex for the first time on a boat, Cassie said. They drank wine during the day and took ecstasy at night.
Eventually, she realised she was just one of Combs’ many girlfriends. She knew he had a family and children. The couple tried to keep their relationship secret for several years.
“I was in love with him,” Cassie said. “It was my first real adult relationship.”
He called her “baby girl” while she called him “Pop Pop” – the same nickname she had used for her grandfather. He also called her CC, for Cassie Combs, a name she would never take on.
Cassie said Combs rented her an apartment in Los Angeles only a few minutes’ drive from his house. He often dropped by unannounced.
Combs abused her “too frequently,” Cassie told the jury.
“If they were violent arguments, they would result in physical abuse,” she said. “Mash my head, knock me over, drag me, kick me.”
She described having busted lips, black eyes, and bruises all over her body.
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