Editor’s note: This story contains graphic descriptions and video that some readers may find disturbing.
Casandra Ventura Fine is eight months pregnant.
She sits at the front of a courtroom sharing how an escort once urinated in her mouth in front of boyfriend Sean “Diddy” Combs because he told her he wanted to watch. Sometimes Combs also participated to the point of choking.
She shares how she got into an inflatable pool filled with baby oil because he requested it. “If Sean wanted it to happen, that was what was going to happen, there was no way around it,” she says under oath.
She recounts this while Combs sits a few feet away next to his lawyers. He holds a Bible at some points, staring at her.
She doesn’t look at him. This is the first time in six years they have seen each other.
“I felt trapped,” she says at one point.
In four days of testimony and cross examination for music mogul Combs’ racketeering and sex trafficking case, Ventura Fine testifies about being punched, kicked and dragged by Combs; dayslong “freak offs” where she was drugged and had sex with other men or women for Combs to watch, or with Combs; being too drugged to remember many details. She also talks about how much she loved Combs and sent him loving and seductive texts, which she has to read to the jury.
Diddy trial: Cassie outlines sexual, physical abuse from the stand
Ex-girlfriend of Sean Combs, Cassie, was on the stand for the third day of the trial, describing Combs’ physical, sexual and psychological abuse.
Diddy on Trial newsletter: Step inside the courtroom with USA TODAY as Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs faces sex crimes and trafficking charges. Subscribe to the newsletter.
Combs has pleaded not guilty to the charges and denied all allegations against him. His defense paints their relationship as consensual, that she was in control and they were “swingers.” They do concede that Combs abused Ventura and was violent.
The glimpses in this trial of Ventura Fine’s life, known professionally as Cassie, come mostly from a security tape and descriptions of “freak offs” where photos and still frames from videos are shown to the jury. The rest of her life is filled in with moments captured on red carpets or at exclusive parties, or tidbits shared in celebrity magazines. We see her through the distorted sketches from the court room where no cameras are allowed.
The life that Cassie shares in the court room, in a matter of fact way, is her past.
Ventura Fine is now 38, expecting her third child with husband Alex Fine. On different days of her testimony, she is dressed in a brown turtleneck dress, a gray dress that could be described as “work wear” and a black suit with a dress shirt untucked over her pregnant belly. She is no longer addicted to opioids. She has been to therapy and rehab. Her Instagram feed is full of photos of her husband and two kids.
She is sitting in room 26a on the 26th floor of the Southern District of New York courthouse in Manhattan.
For some past victims of domestic abuse and sexual violence, part of Ventura Fine’s story feels familiar.
And it’s a story of hope.
When Diddy, Cassie met – and where their relationship led
The woman on the stand was one year out of high school, a private college preparatory school on the Connecticut coast, when she met Combs. He was 36. She had moved to New York to take her modeling from a department store and Seventeen magazine to something bigger.
He would sign her to Bad Boy Records, the label he co-owned, two years later when she was 20. It was a 10-album contract, which would tie her to Combs both artistically and financially for years.
And they would begin dating the next year when she was the face of his clothing line Sean John.
Combs and Ventura Fine’s relationship would last 11 years and take them from movie premieres to the exclusive Met Gala, and from hotel rooms in New York and Miami to federal court.
Her first hit, “Me & U,” would be one of the biggest singles of 2006 and stay on the Billboard Hot 100 charts for 27 weeks. She would record hundreds more songs under Combs, but only one more just barely hit the charts at No. 97. Her job, she would say, became participating in “freak offs” – not music.
In the court, Ventura Fine listened to the most humiliating parts of her past shared to eight men and four women on the jury, as well as a gallery of journalists, lawyers and family members of both Combs and Ventura Fine. Next door, a packed overflow room of additional journalists listened via a live feed.
Jurors watch videos and text messages on screens. They lean to look closer. Privacy screens ensure no one else can see because the judge sealed the sexually explicit evidence of the freak offs.
Reporters take notes on paper, dash out at breaks and call into editors on-stand by who type them into news stories which are broadcast and published across the world.
“Cassie says Diddy threatened to release freak off video,” publishes TMZ. “Diddy Allegedly Made Sex Worker Do Shocking Act in Cassie’s Mouth During ‘Freak Off’: ‘Felt Like She Was Choking,’” People magazine writes.
Her last Instagram post, over a month ago, shows her in a black dress and is captioned, “mastering peace.” Her feed is full of happy photos with her two girls, Frankie 5, and Sunny, 4. She is smiling with her husband.
Alex Fine, 32, sits in the gallery and watches his wife, occasionally looking at Combs.
Cassie Ventura testimony proves power of leaving abuse
The reach of domestic violence is not always measured in assaults, but in the years of abuse. In the depths of abuse, it can become normalized and it can feel impossible to see a way out. Most women try to leave seven times before they can, and they are at the highest risk for danger when they do.
Ventura Fine describes how hard it was to leave.
Combs’ attorneys, instead, said she wanted to stay in the relationship, that Combs lied and cheated on her and let her down, but “you kept coming back to him for 11 years.”
“I wouldn’t use ‘coming back,’” she replied.
Prosecutors release 2016 hotel video of Sean Combs assaulting Cassie
Prosecutors have released the hotel surveillance video from 2016 showing Sean Combs physically assaulting then-girlfriend Cassie. This is the full video, edited to include the five camera angles presented in court.
One of the times she tried to leave, there is video evidence of what happened.
Ventura Fine testified that before she left their room at the now-shuttered InterContinental Hotel in Los Angeles, she was participating in a freak off that turned violent. The video shows Combs punching, kicking and dragging Ventura Fine in the hotel hallway. CNN first released the video in May of last year after Combs’ associates tried to pay a security guard $100,000 to keep it hidden. Prosecutors released the full version of the 2016 surveillance video during court this week, and jurors watched it several times.
Ventura Fine broke up with Combs in 2018, and she started dating her now husband. One night that year she had dinner with Combs. He drove her home, she said, and raped her.
“I remember crying and saying no, but it was very fast,” she testified. The two, she said, would have sex once after that, consensually.
By spring of 2019, she was pregnant, and she and Fine debated having the baby first or getting married, she shared to Vogue. He surprised her with a proposal.
They were married one month later in a black tie backyard celebration in Malibu, with 14 guests, according to Vogue magazine, which featured the wedding and a story that left Combs out of it. She wore a billowy white off-the-shoulder dress that accommodated her growing baby bump and they ended the night with a heart-shaped pizza.
Their baby girl was born four months later.
Ventura Fine shared a birthday post for her husband in March 2021 that gave a glimpse into their life.
“Since I’ve met you it’s been nonstop laughter and love. You’ve helped teach me not to take myself too seriously and just enjoy the moment and for that I am forever grateful,” she wrote on Instagram. “I promise to always kiss my lip gloss on you and make you laugh. Thank you for making me a Mama and being the best Dada. I can’t believe we’re about to do it again!”
She would tell the court that two years later, in 2023, she “was spinning out.” Ventura Fine testified, “I didn’t want to be alive anymore at that point.”
She recalled a time while she filmed a music video with another artist that she had “horrible flashbacks” and triggers, and when she went home to her husband and children, “I remember telling him, ‘You can do this without me.’”
Ventura Fine said it all just felt “too painful” and that “I tried walking out the door into traffic and my husband wouldn’t let me.”
Later that year, in her civil suit against Combs, she would say that “she credits her children with saving her from the trauma that had consumed over a decade of her life.” Combs would settle the next day for $20 million.
She went to rehab for trauma therapy and addiction in 2024.
There will be likely six more weeks of witnesses testimony. In that time, Cassie will have her third child.
So why is she here today, prosecutors asked her this week.
“I can’t carry this anymore. I cannot carry the shame, the guilt,” she said when asked why she was testifying. She said she was guided to treat people “like they were disposable.”
She says she had hundreds of “freak offs” with Combs.
She was asked how many since?
None, she said.
Outside the courthouse after her last day of testimony, her lawyer shared a statement from her.
“I hope that my testimony has given strength and a voice to other survivors, and can help others who have suffered to speak up and also heal from the abuse and fear.”
If you or someone you know is a victim of domestic violence, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233 or text “START” to 88788.
If you or someone you know is struggling with mental and/or substance use disorders, you can call the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration‘s free and confidential treatment referral and information service at 1-800-662-HELP (4357). It’s available 24/7 in English and Spanish (TTY: 1-800-487-4889).
If you are a survivor of sexual assault, RAINN offers support through the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 800.656.HOPE (4673) andHotline.RAINN.org and en EspañolRAINN.org/es.
Contributing: Aysha Bagchi and Patrick Ryan
