Cassie Testifies at Sean "Diddy" Combs' Trial about Violence, Freak Offs

Sean “Diddy” Combs’ former partner, the R&B singer Cassie, took the witness stand in his high-profile federal sex crimes trial on Tuesday, a day after prosecutors showed jurors video of the music mogul beating her in a hotel in 2016.

Testimony in the trial began Monday. Prosecutors told jurors that, for years, Combs used his status as a powerful executive to coerce women into abusive sexual encounters and became violent if they refused.

Cassie, noticeably pregnant with her third child on the witness stand, was emotional from the start. She would take deep breaths and sometimes pause as she spoke.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Emily Johnson started questioning Cassie by asking her age, which is 38, and her occupation, which she said is “musician, an entertainer.” She said she was in a relationship with Combs for just over 10 years.

The singer, whose real name is Casandra Ventura, testified that her relationship with Combs ran the gamut from good times to arguments and physical altercations.

“If they were violent arguments, it would usually result in some sort of physical abuse and dragging, just different things,” Cassie told jurors.

She testified that Combs would mash her head, drag her, kick her, and stomp her in the head when she was down.

Asked how frequently Combs became violent with her, Cassie softly responded: “Too frequently.”

When the prosecutor questioned her about “freak-offs,” she said she was barely 22 when Combs first asked her to participate in them. She said she was “confused, nervous, but also loved him very much.”

Asked how she felt when Combs first proposed engaging in a “freak-off,” Cassie said: “I just remember my stomach falling to my butt. Just the nervousness and confusion in that moment.”

“Freak-offs” were the highly orchestrated sexual encounters that she said stemmed from Combs’ interest in voyeurism. They would entail hiring an escort and “setting up this experience so that I could perform for Sean,” Cassie said.

“The freak-offs became a job,” she said, noting that other encounters took anywhere from 36 or 48 hours. The marathon sessions frequently required periods of recovery from dehydration, fatigue, and drug use, she said.

Shown still images from the now-infamous 2016 security camera footage of Combs beating her at a Los Angeles hotel, Cassie said prior to the altercation: “We were having an encounter called a ‘freak-off’ and I was leaving there.”

She said she didn’t feel like she could say no to Combs because she “didn’t know what ‘no’ could be, or what ‘no’ could turn into,” which she said she learned could include violence and blackmail threats.

“Sean controlled a lot of my life, whether it was career, the way I dressed, everything, everything. I just didn’t have much say in it at the time,” Cassie testified.

Elaborating on why she felt it was so difficult to refuse Combs’ demands, Cassie reiterated her fears of violence and blackmail videos from “freak-offs” being disseminated on the internet.

“Sean is a really polarizing person, also really charming,” Cassie said. “It’s hard to really be able to decide in that moment what you need when he’s telling you what he wants. I just didn’t know. I didn’t know what would happen.”

After touching on the violence and “freak-offs” that are central to the federal charges, Johnson returned to eliciting biographical and historical information about Cassie, including when she first signed to Bad Boy Records in early 2006.

She said her interactions with Combs, who owned the label, were platonic at first. But then he kissed her during her 21st birthday trip to Las Vegas in the bathroom of his hotel suite. “I was just really confused at the time,” she said. “And young.”

After the Las Vegas trip, Cassie said, she was invited by Combs to hotels in New York, where they’d talk about music projects and albums.

When Assistant U.S. Attorney Johnson asked what else happened at hotels, Cassie took a deep breath and said she was introduced to the “idea of oral sex” at the hotels.

Cassie also noted that Combs is 17 years older than her and that she was “sexually inexperienced” when they first got together.

She said she eventually had sexual intercourse with Combs on a boat during a trip to Miami. She said she had wine in the afternoon, and then Combs introduced her to ecstasy for the first time.

After that, she said, she felt closer to the rapper and producer, started spending more time with him, and thought, at the time, that they were in a monogamous relationship.

In hindsight, she said, she knows that wasn’t the case. Asked why, she responded: “Sean Combs had many girlfriends.”

As Cassie testified, the prosecution introduced photos of her and Combs at events in the mid-2000s. The numerous photographs included a photograph of the boat in Miami. Another depicted the fledgling couple at a strip club in New York on Halloween 2007, shortly after the trip to Miami. Another picture showed them in the back of a car at the beginning of their relationship, Combs’ arm wrapped around her.

“I was just enamored by him. We were just having a good time. It was really fun, at this point,” she said.

Cassie noted that, early on in their relationship, they weren’t public about it. She said Combs had expressed concerns about perceptions, given that his company was also producing her music.

Over time, Cassie testified, Combs became increasingly controlling and sometimes was violent. She said Combs would get abusive over the smallest perceived slights — if she wasn’t smiling at him the way he wanted, or if he thought she was acting like a brat.

“You make the wrong face and the next thing I knew, I was getting hit in the face,” she said.

Cassie said that if she didn’t respond to his call right away, there would be incessant calls until she did and Combs’ staff, including security workers, would join in the pursuit.

Jealousy was cited during opening statements Monday as a source of much of the conflict between Combs and Cassie. Johnson elicited from Cassie that she and Combs were seeing other people at times.

In the beginning, Cassie said, she was “insanely jealous.” She said that resulted from being “super young.”+

“I didn’t get that he was him. As he would say, ‘I’m Puff Daddy. Puff Daddy has many rules. Likes the company of women,’” she recalled.

She said that as time passed, she came to believe “more often than not” that they were in a monogamous relationship. “He expected that of me, so I assumed it was the same.”

She said Combs told her, “I’m not dealing with anyone else. It’s just us.”

She noted that the rap star paid her rent at apartments close to his residences in New York and later Los Angeles, had his own sets of keys, and made “a lot of unannounced visits.”

Cassie said that as a birthday present, Combs rented her a Manhattan apartment a few blocks from where he lived. Another apartment Combs rented for Cassie in Los Angeles was just a three-minute drive from his home, and he’d sometimes drive a golf cart to get from one residence to the other.

Before the trial paused for a 40-minute lunch break, Johnson pressed Cassie to explain what happened to her music career and the nine albums that were never released.

Cassie said she created hundreds of songs, some of which were released on the internet prior to “proper release and some just didn’t see the light of day.” Cassie testified that much of her week went toward the “freak-offs.”

“Freak-offs became a job where there was no space to do anything else but to recover and just try to feel normal again,” she said.

A judge ruled that Cassie’s husband, Alex Fine, can be in the courtroom for most — but not all — of her testimony.

Judge Arun Subramanian, acting on a defense request, said Fine must leave the courtroom when questioning turns to Cassie’s allegation that Combs raped her in 2018. That’s because Combs’ lawyers say they may call Fine as a witness later in the trial in an attempt to discredit Cassie’s allegation.

Prosecutors argued that Fine is part of the emotional support system for Cassie, who’s pregnant with their third child, and should be in the courtroom when she testifies.

Cassie, a key prosecution witness, met Combs in 2005 when she was 19 and he was 37. He signed her to his Bad Boy Records label and, within a few years, they started dating.

In her 2023 lawsuit, Cassie alleges Combs trapped her in a “cycle of abuse, violence, and sex trafficking” for more than a decade, including raping her and forcing her to engage in sexsual acts with male escorts. Combs settled the lawsuit the next day.

Among other things, Cassie alleges Combs raped her when she tried to leave him and often punched, kicked and beat her, causing injuries including bruises, burst lips, black eyes and bleeding. She also alleges that Combs was involved in blowing up rival rapper Kid Cudi’s car when he learned Cudi was romantically interested in her, and she alleges that Combs ran out of his home with guns when he learned Suge Knight, a rival producer, was eating at a nearby diner.

The proceedings on Tuesday also included the hip-hop mogul’s lawyer questioning Daniel Phillip, a male stripper who says he was paid to have intercourse with Cassie while Combs watched.

Defense lawyer Xavier Donaldson pointed to Phillip’s past statements to federal prosecutors as he attempted to show inconsistencies in his recollection of events. Donaldson finished his cross-examination after suggesting Phillip had developed a crush on Cassie and wanted to isolate her from Combs so he could be with her romantically. Phillip denied that but admitted: “I was attracted to her. If she ever gave me the chance to date her, I absolutely would have.”

Once Donaldson was finished, a prosecutor asked Phillip more questions, underscoring the witness’ earlier testimony that it was Combs who directed his sexual activity with Cassie.

Subramanian had previously acknowledged that in his opening remarks about whether sexually explicit videos and images expected to be shown to the jury during testimony by Cassie should be viewed by members of the media.

He said that while a lot had been handled under seal before the trial, “we are now in trial and there is a heightened First Amendment concern.”

During the discussion about whether sexually explicit videos should be available for viewing by members of the media, attorney Robert Balin told the judge on behalf of media outlets that news organizations weren’t interested in reporting “something salacious” and were not seeking copies of the exhibits.

He also suggested as an alternative that a group of pool reporters could be allowed to view the exhibits.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Johnson argued against letting media outlets see sexually explicit videos, saying there was good legal precedent to keep such materials out of the public record.

Combs’ attorney, Marc Agnifilo, said there was no aspect of the videos that was not “in the nature of adult pornography.” He said they all contained images of people who are nude, having intercourse, or about to have intercourse.

On behalf of news outlets, Balin told the judge the First Amendment is “at a zenith” in this type of case and that it was important that the “people, though the press, be able to see justice is being done.” He said the best evidence of whether sexual acts that were recorded were coerced — as prosecutors allege — was the videos themselves.