In a dramatic turn of events during Sean “Diddy” Combs’ ongoing federal trial for sex trafficking and racketeering, singer Cassie Ventura, his former partner, has delivered a harrowing testimony that has sent shockwaves through the entertainment industry.

Cassie’s detailed account sheds light on years of alleged abuse, manipulation, and control exerted by Combs, painting a disturbing picture of life behind the scenes with the music mogul.

A Decade of Alleged Abuse and Control

Cassie Ventura’s testimony reveals a relationship marked by coercion and fear. She alleges that Combs exerted control over nearly every aspect of her life, from her career decisions to personal matters.

According to her, this control extended to orchestrating drug-fueled sex parties, referred to as “freak-offs,” where she was allegedly forced to engage in sexual acts with male escorts while Combs watched and recorded the encounters .

Cassie also recounted instances of physical abuse, including a violent episode at a Los Angeles hotel in 2016, where surveillance footage reportedly shows Combs assaulting her in a hallway . These incidents, she claims, were part of a broader pattern of intimidation and control that persisted throughout their relationship.

The Alleged “Secret Monastery”

One of the most startling revelations from Cassie’s testimony involves what she described as Combs’ “secret monastery.” While details remain scarce, Cassie alleges that this secluded location was used for private gatherings that involved illicit activities. She claims that within this space, Combs conducted rituals and enforced strict rules, further isolating her from the outside world.

Cassie’s depiction of the monastery suggests a place designed to maintain secrecy and control, where she felt trapped and powerless. This aspect of her testimony has raised questions about the extent of Combs’ alleged manipulative behaviors and the environments he created to facilitate them.

Impact on the Entertainment Industry

Cassie’s revelations have had a profound impact on the entertainment industry, prompting discussions about power dynamics, abuse, and accountability. Several other individuals have come forward with their own allegations against Combs, painting a broader picture of misconduct. The trial has also led to increased scrutiny of industry practices and the mechanisms that allow such behavior to persist.

As the trial continues, the testimonies and evidence presented are expected to have lasting implications, not only for Combs but also for the broader conversation around abuse and exploitation in the entertainment world.

Legal Proceedings and Public Reaction

The legal proceedings against Combs are ongoing, with the court examining the extensive allegations brought forth by Cassie and others. Public reaction has been intense, with many expressing support for the alleged victims and calling for justice. The case has sparked widespread media coverage and discussions about the importance of listening to and believing survivors of abuse.

As more information emerges, the trial is poised to be a landmark case in addressing abuse within the entertainment industry, potentially leading to significant changes in how such cases are handled and how victims are supported.

The 14 biggest bombshells from the Diddy trial — including testimony of an assault outside Prince’s house

A courtroom sketch from September of Sean Combs and his attorneys. Elizabeth Williams via AP

Ventura’s mother has described physically confronting Combs during a 2011 argument over her daughter’s missing cellphone, and two male strippers have regaled the jury with sometimes X-rated testimony about “freak offs.”

Along the way, there have been numerous celebrity mentions, including pop icon Britney Spears, actor Michael B. Jordan, and late music legend Prince.

Rapper Kid Cudi capped an already busy week two by describing his brief romance with Ventura, testifying that a jealous Combs broke into his LA home and unwrapped his family’s Christmas presents.

Combs was arrested in September on federal charges of racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking, and transportation to engage in prostitution — the culmination of months of lawsuits and public accusations of sexual assault and other misconduct.

It was Ventura’s November 2023 lawsuit that began this avalanche of accusations. Filed about 10 months before the criminal charges, it accused Combs of rape, physical abuse, and controlling her during their relationship. The lawsuit was settled a day later for what Ventura testified was $20 million.

Combs has denied the charges. The music tycoon is arguing through his defense team that all sexual encounters were consensual, including the alleged drug-fueled freak offs. The defense also argues that any violence fell far short of sex trafficking and that his accusers have a financial motive to implicate him.

Here are some of the most striking moments from the trial so far.

Combs beat Ventura outside a Prince party, ex-assistant said

Prince’s security once intervened after Sean “Diddy” Combs attacked Cassie Ventura, Combs’ ex-assistant testified. BERTRAND GUAY/AFP via Getty Images

One of Combs’ ex-personal assistants testified on May 29 that Combs once attacked Ventura during a party thrown by music icon Prince.

The government witness, who used the pseudonym “Mia,” told the jury she and Ventura had snuck out to Prince’s Los Angeles home after learning he would be performing for a small gathering.

“We were just having fun,” dancing on top of Prince’s pool, Mia told jurors. The pool had been covered with purple plexiglass and was backlit with party lights, and the funk star played music for his guests while standing on a small table, Mia remembered from the witness stand.

Then Combs showed up, she said.

“I saw his bucket hat come through the entrance and then made eye contact with him,” Mia said of Combs. “Me and Cass just booked it.”

Mia, who said she previously worked as a PA for actor Mike Myers, told the jury that she and Ventura ran through the house and out into a wooded area, where they tried to hide from Combs.

“Puff caught Cass. He caught up to her and he had her on the ground,” Mia said of Combs. “He started to attack her, but Prince’s security quickly intervened.”

Ventura previously testified that she knew Combs would not approve of her going to Prince’s party, but she went anyway because she thought it would be “a once-in-a-lifetime experience.”

Later that night, Ventura testified that Combs continued to beat her back at her hotel, leaving her with “bruising on my face, knots on my head.”

Ex-employee Capricorn Clark testified Combs kidnapped her at gunpoint

Sean “Diddy” Combs’ ex-assistant Capricorn Clark testified against the hip-hop mogul at his criminal trial. Adam Gray/Getty Images

Capricorn Clark, Combs’ former personal assistant who became one of his top marketing executives, kicked off week three of the trial by telling jurors that he once kidnapped her at gunpoint.

It was December 2011, after Combs learned of rapper Kid Cudi’s brief relationship with Ventura, Clark testified on May 27.

Combs was “furious” with Clark for keeping him in the dark about Ventura’s romance with the “Pursuit of Happiness” rapper, she said.

Clark told the jury that Combs, armed with a gun, went to her house in a rage and banged on the door.

“He just said, ‘Get dressed, we’re going to go kill’” him, Clark testified that Combs told her, using the N-word to refer to Kid Cudi.

Combs then took Clark to Kid Cudi’s Los Angeles home, she told the jury, describing it as being “kidnapped.”

“The way he was acting, I just felt like anything could happen,” a tearful Clark testified.

Ex-exec says years before “freak offs” Combs took Kim Porter to hotels too — with candles and baby oil

Kim Porter and Sean “Diddy” Combs in 2003. Getty Images/Giulio Marcocchi

In the first week of trial testimony, Ventura told jurors that starting in late 2008, she was coerced by Combs into a decade’s worth of near-weekly “freak offs” — dayslong sex performances, usually at luxury hotels, involving male escorts, Glade candles, and numerous bottles of baby oil.

Clark told jurors that in the years she was Combs personal assistant, from 2004 until 2006, she would set up and clean up the hotel rooms where Combs took another longterm girlfriend, model Kim Porter, the mother of four of Combs’ children.

During those years, Combs and Porter would stay for days at luxury hotels in Atlanta, Los Angeles, and New York. Clark said, as a personal assistant, she made sure Combs’ suite was stocked with ecstasy, baby oil, and pricey Diptyque candles.

Cleanup was tricky, Clark told jurors, who mentioned “handprints left in oil on the, like, ultra-suede wall” as a particular problem. “It was just a lot of baby oil. It was just everywhere.”

These were not “freak offs,” Porter’s former family attorney, Suzanne Kimberly Bracker, told Business Insider.

“He was madly in love with Kim,” said Bracker, who helped negotiate Combs’ child support settlement and who said that Porter had two children with Combs at the time.

“There is absolutely no way that he would share her with another man,” she said. “He would tell her ‘I’m not gonna pay for an apartment with my kids in one room while you’re with another guy in the other bedroom.’”

Kid Cudi said Combs broke into his house and probably torched his Porsche

A courtroom sketch of Kid Cudi, left, testifying at Sean “Diddy” Combs’ criminal trial. Jane Rosenberg/REUTERS

Kid Cudi took the witness stand in Combs’ trial on May 22, telling jurors that in December 2011, the music tycoon broke into his Hollywood Hills home, enraged after finding out about the rival rapper’s short-lived romance with Ventura.

Kid Cudi, given name Scott Mescudi, told the jury that he returned home after the break-in to find the Christmas gifts he’d planned to give his family unwrapped and opened. His dog, he said, had been shut in the bathroom.

Mescudi said he was tipped off about the break-in in real time, when Clark, Combs’ then-assistant, called him to say she was outside his house — and that Combs was inside.

“Motherfucker, you in my house?” Mescudi recalled telling Combs over the phone as he raced home to confront him.

Combs was gone by the time he arrived, Mescudi said.

Mescudi also told the jury that some two weeks later, his Porsche was firebombed while in his driveway.

Jurors had first heard about the firebombing when Ventura took the witness stand in the first week of the trial and described Combs’ jealous rage on learning of her brief fling with Mescudi. She told jurors that Combs lunged at her with a corkscrew, threatened to release their sex tapes, and warned he’d torch Mescudi’s car.

Combs discovered the relationship during a freak off in Los Angeles when he went through Ventura’s phone, she testified.

“I just remember him putting like a wine bottle opener between his fingers and, like, lunging at me,” Ventura said, adding that Combs’ “eyes blacked out, super angry.”

The Porsche “arson” is a specific element in the racketeering charges against Combs. Prosecutors alleged in court papers that Combs ordered his underlings to torch a vehicle “by slicing open the car’s convertible top and dropping a Molotov cocktail inside the interior.”

Cassie’s mom describes ‘trying to hit’ Combs in a fight over her daughter’s stolen phone

Regina Ventura, mother to star prosecution witness Cassie Ventura, arrives for her own testimony at the Manhattan sex-trafficking and racketeering trial of Sean “Diddy” Combs. Kylie Cooper/REUTERS

Regina Ventura corroborated her daughter’s testimony, where she alleged two of Combs’ violent, jealous rages over romantic rivals.

The first was from 2011. The mom said Cassie Ventura came home to Connecticut for the Christmas holidays that year with a large bruise on her back.

Cassie Ventura previously testified that the bruise was from being kicked to the ground by Combs after a fight over alleged romantic rival Mescudi.

The mom showed jurors a Blackberry text Cassie Ventura had sent while en route to Connecticut, memorializing what the daughter testified were Combs’ threats to release sexually explicit videos, including on Christmas Day.

Combs also demanded that the family pay him $20,000 for “expenses,” the mom testified. The family complied, taking out a second mortgage because “I was scared for my daughter’s safety,” she testified. Combs returned the money days later, the mom told jurors, giving no explanation for the refund.

Regina Ventura also told jurors about a 2016 incident that her daughter also testified about.

It was shortly before the younger Ventura’s 30th birthday. Combs had swiped her cellphone, Cassie Ventura testified, after learning about her affair with an unnamed professional NFL player.

When she returned to her Los Angeles apartment without her phone, her mother, who was visiting, called the police and confronted Combs outside the building as her daughter remained upstairs, the elder Ventura testified.

“I was yelling and screaming and trying to hit him,” the mom told jurors. “He did give it back,” she told jurors of the missing phone.

Cassie screamed ‘Isn’t anybody seeing this?’ as Combs attacked her on his private jet, ex-assistant says

Singer and key prosecution witness Cassie Ventura was in tears on the witness stand at the Sean “Diddy” Combs sex-trafficking trial. Jane Rosenberg/REUTERS

In some of the most compelling testimony of the trial, a former Combs personal assistant described watching — and doing nothing — as his boss brutally attacked a cowering Ventura in the bedroom of the rapper’s private jet.

Former personal assistant George Kaplan, 34, said the attack happened on a crowded flight to Las Vegas in the latter half of 2015. Kaplan said he heard the sound of screams and shattering glass coming from the jet’s bedroom.

He said he turned to see Combs standing over Ventura with a “whiskey rock glass” in his hand, as she cowered on the bed.

“After the glass crashed, Cassiie screamed, ‘Isn’t anybody seeing this?’” Kaplan told the jury.

“Did you look away?” asked a federal prosecutor, Assistant US Attorney Maurene Comey. Kaplan said he did.

“And after you looked away, what did you hear?” the prosecutor asked.

“Further glass crashing and chaos.”

When the prosecutor asked what, if anything, the Combs security staff did in response, Kaplan answered, “Nothing.”

No one, he said, went back to check on Ventura after Combs left the bedroom to rejoin his employees.

“I was 23 years old,” Kaplan said in explanation of his own inaction. “All I wanted to do was have a great job in the entertainment industry.”

Ultimately, he told the jury, this and similar domestic violence incidents drove him to quit.

Another former personal assistant told of the night he said Diddy went looking for Suge Knight

David James, a former assistant for Sean “Diddy” Combs. John Lamparski/Getty Images

Combs’ former personal assistant spent two days on the witness stand, and in his most dramatic testimony, described how a 2008 run for cheeseburgers at an all-night diner nearly escalated the East Coast-West Coast rap wars.

It started at 4 a.m. in the parking lot at Mel’s Drive-In in Los Angeles, the ex-assistant, David James, testified.

Combs’ trusted security guard, Damian “D-Roc” Butler, noticed that Suge Knight, cofounder of rival recording studio Death Row Records, was sitting in an Escalade just a few parking spots away.

James, Combs’ personal assistant from 2007 to 2009, testified that he was at the wheel of Combs’ silver Lincoln Navigator when Knight and D-Roc faced off.

“What are you doing in my city?” James, according to his testimony, remembered hearing Knight asking Combs’ security guard, who had introduced himself as “D-Roc, Biggie’s boy,” a reference to the rapper Notorious B.I.G.

Within moments, James and the bodyguard saw someone pass a gun to Knight and watched as four SUVs pulled up into different corners of the parking lot, he told jurors.

James testified that he was ordered by D-Roc to speed back to Combs’ Hollywood Hills estate. There was no mention of whether they drove back with or without the cheeseburgers.

Once back home, and as Ventura protested in tears, Combs grabbed three guns for the ten-minute drive with D-Roc back to Mel’s, testified James, who said he was still the driver.

Knight was nowhere to be found upon their return, James said.

“It was the first time I realized my life was in danger,” the former PA testified, telling jurors that he sent in his resignation soon after.

Dawn Richard testified about a brutal beating, an alleged death threat, and flowers

Former Danity Kane member Dawn Richard testified against Sean “Diddy” Combs at his trial. Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images for MTV

Danity Kane singer Dawn Richard was the fifth prosecution witness, and her testimony on May 16 alleged that in 2009, Combs brutally beat Ventura after she took too long to cook him dinner.

“Where’s my fucking egg?” Richard recounted to the jury Combs shouting in 2009, as he stormed into the kitchen of his rented Los Angeles mansion.

“He took the skillet with the eggs in it and tried to hit her in the head, and she fell to the ground,” Richard testified.

Ventura cowered on the floor “in a fetal position” as Combs punched her and kicked her, she testified. Then he dragged her upstairs by her hair, she said, adding that she then heard the sound of screaming and breaking glass from the third floor.

The next day, Combs called Ventura and Richard into the mansion’s first-floor recording studio, she said.

“He said that what we saw was passion, and it was what lovers in a relationship do,” Richard said.

She said Combs told the two women that “he was trying to take us to the top, and that, where he comes from, people go missing if they say things like that, like, if people talk. And then he gave us flowers.”

While back on the stand on May 19, Richard re-emphasized that she felt this was a threat to her life.

The details in the testimony came as a surprise to Combs’ lead defense attorney Marc Agnifilo, who called it prejudicial and “just a drop dead lie.”

“It didn’t happen,” the lawyer complained to the judge. “And the reason we know it didn’t happen is that Ms. Ventura didn’t talk about it” during her four days on the witness stand.

On cross-examination on May 19, Richard agreed that she only recalled the alleged death threat in speaking with prosecutors earlier this month. It had gone unmentioned, she agreed, during a half-dozen prior interviews with prosecutors.

Combs attacked Ventura over bathroom use, prosecutor and ex-bestie say

Combs and Ventura had an on-and-off relationship for 11 years. Gilbert Flores/Variety via Getty Images; Johnny Nunez/WireImage

Ventura was beaten by Combs for the most minor of perceived infractions, including taking too long in the bathroom, prosecutor Emily Johnson said in her opening statement.

“He beat her when she didn’t answer the phone when he called. He beat her when she left a freak off without his permission,” Johnson said.

Ventura’s ex-best friend, Kerry Morgan, was called to the witness stand on May 19 and told jurors about two attacks on Ventura she witnessed, including one while on vacation in Jamaica in 2013.

Morgan said Ventura at one point went to the bathroom at the residence where they were staying, and Combs said, “She’s taking too long.”

“A few minutes later, I heard her screaming — like guttural. Terrifying,” Morgan said. “He was dragging her by her hair on the floor.”

Morgan told jurors that she saw Combs push Ventura to the ground, causing her to hit her head on the paving bricks.

“She didn’t move. She fell on her side,” Morgan said, adding, “I thought she was knocked out.”

Ventura, too, had testified that arguments with Combs would regularly result in physical abuse.

Ventura —who dated Combs on and off from 2007 to 2018 — described six separate times when Combs’ attacks left her with injuries, with the most severe beating occurring in Los Angeles in 2009 following a party Combs had hosted at a club called Ace of Diamonds.

Ventura said she punched Combs in the face after he called her a “slut or a bitch” for talking to a record producer. Combs retaliated in the back seat of a chauffeured luxury vehicle by punching and kicking Ventura throughout a ten-minute ride to the rapper’s rented mansion, she said.

She said she hid under the back seat to escape the attack. Combs demanded she stay hidden in a hotel for a week so her bruises could heal, she said.

The surprising things Combs kept in his luxury NYC hotel room while waiting to be arrested

Sean “Diddy” Combs was arrested in September 2024. Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP

The prosecution’s fourth witness took the witness stand briefly on May 16 to detail what she and other Homeland Security investigators say they found inside Combs’ suite at Manhattan’s Park Hyatt New York after his September arrest.

Combs had checked into the luxury Midtown hotel, his lawyers have said, in case federal prosecutors in Manhattan had asked him to surrender voluntarily.

Special Agent Yasin Binda told the Combs jury she photographed what her colleagues found inside the room.

Those items included a clear plastic bag of baby oil bottles found inside a duffle bag. There were three more bottles of baby oil in his bathtub, alongside two bottles of personal lubricant.

Two more bottles of lubricant were recovered from a nightstand drawer, next to a prescription pill bottle she said held two small baggies containing a pink powder.

On the living room floor was a large blue party light of the kind Ventura testified were used to illuminate freak offs.

Similar bags of pink powder have previously been seized from Combs and tested positive for ecstasy and other drugs, a prosecutor had said in court the day after Combs was arrested.

Ventura’s big settlements after her lawsuit and that infamous hallway-beatdown video

Cassie Ventura testified over the course of four days at Sean “Diddy” Combs’ trial. Jane Rosenberg/REUTERS

In some of her final moments on the witness stand, Ventura was asked by the defense about a legal settlement that she said she is on the verge of receiving from the InterContinental Hotel in Century City, Los Angeles.

“I think it was $10 million,” Ventura said of the settlement, hesitating when asked for the total amount agreed to.

The InterContinental is where security cameras captured Combs beating Ventura in a hallway in 2016, as she tried to flee what prosecutors say was one of Combs’ freak offs.

The jury was shown the infamous footage at the beginning of the trial.

Johnson, the prosecutor, said in her opening statements that at the time of the attack, Combs paid a security guard at the hotel $100,000 in a brown paper envelope in exchange for the footage.

Combs apologized for his actions in the video after CNN published the footage last year.

It was the second big-money settlement revealed in Ventura’s testimony.

Earlier in her testimony, Ventura told jurors that Combs paid her $20 million to settle her civil suit against him in 2023.

Britney Spears and Michael B. Jordan were among the celebrities mentioned at the trial

Britney Spears was among the celebrities mentioned at Sean “Diddy” Combs’ trial. Christopher Polk via Getty Images

Pop icon Britney Spears and actor Michael B. Jordan were both name-dropped on May 15, on Ventura’s third day of testimony.

During a cross-examination, Ventura was asked to tell the jury about the 21st birthday party Combs threw for her in 2007, at a club in Las Vegas.

The party was a significant moment in the Combs-Ventura story. Ventura testified that Combs, who recently signed her to his record label, gave her an uninvited kiss in a bathroom, sparking their relationship.

“I believe there were other celebrities there in attendance?” defense attorney Anna Estevao asked Ventura, who answered yes, there were.

“Sean was there, and he brought Dallas Austin, he brought Britney Spears,” Ventura said, referring to the “Oops!… I Did It Again” singer and the record producer. “I think those were the two people that stand out to me,” Ventura added.

Asked how a 21-year-old of limited fame was able to attract such big names to her party, Ventura credited Combs, saying, “That was all him.”

Jordan’s name came up as the cross-examination focused on 2015, when Combs became suspicious that she was having an affair with the actor.

“Is Michael B. Jordan a celebrity?” Estevao asked.

“I would say so,” Ventura answered, sounding surprised.

Combs overdosed on opioids at the Playboy Mansion, Ventura said

Sean Combs went to a party at the Playboy Mansion and got sick on painkillers, Cassie Ventura testified. Jeff Minton

Both Combs and Ventura were heavy opioid users, the R&B singer testified — and on one late night in February 2012, the pills he took made the rapper seriously ill, she said.

“Was that around the time that Whitney Houston died?” Estevao, Combs’ defense attorney, asked about the timing.

“Yes,” Ventura said.

That evening, the pair went to a sex club in San Bernardino, California, and then she went home, and Combs went to a party at the Playboy Mansion, Ventura told jurors.

“Well, from what he told me, he took a very strong opiate that night, but we didn’t know what was happening, so we took him to the hospital,” Ventura testified.

There, she said, she learned that he had overdosed on whatever painkillers he had taken, she said.

Ventura said she first joined Diddy’s freak offs out of love

Ventura is the prosecution’s key witness in the criminal trial of Sean “Diddy” Combs. Emma McIntyre/Getty Images

Ventura testified on May 13 that she was initially nervous, but felt a sense of responsibility to participate in Combs’ freak offs.

“I was just in love and wanted to make him happy,” Ventura told the jury.

Ventura testified that in 2007, Combs first proposed “this sexual encounter that he called voyeurism, where he would watch me have a sexual encounter with a third man, specifically another man.”

“I didn’t want to upset him if I said it scared me or if I said anything aside from, ‘OK, let’s try it,’” she said.

Johnson said in her opening statements that Combs eventually made it Ventura’s job to find and book escorts to participate in the sex encounters.

While on the stand, Ventura described in detail what went on during freak offs. Prosecutors say Combs arranged, directed, and often electronically recorded the sex performances.

Ventura testified that Combs would urinate and ask escorts to urinate on her during the freak offs.

“It was disgusting. It was too much. It was overwhelming,” she said. “I choked.”