Singer says on day three of trial Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs routinely beat her and threatened to break her profession with movies of sexual encounters.
Casandra Ventura, the singer popularly often known as Cassie and former girlfriend of rap mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs, has taken to the witness stand on the third day of his trial to painting a relationship outlined by bodily abuse and routine humiliation.
Testifying earlier than the court docket on Wednesday, Ventura stated Combs, who faces intercourse trafficking and racketeering costs, beat her and threatened to launch compromising movies that might harm her profession.
“He would seize me up, push me down, hit me within the aspect of the top, kick me,” Ventura, a rhythm and blues singer, advised jurors in Manhattan federal court docket.
“It will simply make him extra violent, make him stronger, make him need to push me tougher,” Ventura stated of efforts to withstand Combs’s violent behaviour throughout their decadelong relationship.
Prosecutors have alleged that Combs used his wealth and management of an entertainment empire to govern and coerce girls, generally by means of bodily violence, into participation in drug-fuelled intercourse events often known as “freak-offs” after which used movies of sexual encounters as blackmail.
“He stated that it could break every thing that I had labored for, that it could make me appear to be a slut, that I might be shamed,” Ventura stated. “No person ought to try this to anybody.”
She said participation within the “freak-offs” began to really feel like “a job the place there was no area to do anything however to recuperate and simply attempt to really feel regular once more” and she or he developed an opioid dependancy to manage.
On one event in 2013, Ventura despatched Combs photos of accidents she sustained when he threw her right into a mattress body so he might “keep in mind” what he had performed.
“You don’t know when to cease. You pushed it too far and continued to push,” he responded. “Unhappy.”
Combs’s attorneys have conceded that the rapper has an aggressive temperament and has bodily assaulted folks but state he has been incorrectly charged with racketeering and intercourse trafficking and a freewheeling sexual life-style is being misconstrued by prosecutors.
Combs has pleaded not responsible to 5 counts of racketeering conspiracy, intercourse trafficking and transportation to have interaction in prostitution. If he’s convicted on all costs, he faces a compulsory minimal sentence of 15 years in jail.