Cassie Ventura's poignant testimony reveals the alleged abuse associated with Sean 'Diddy' Combs's sex-trafficking trial.

Singer Casandra “Cassie” Ventura finished her emotional closing statements in sex-trafficking and racketeering trial in New York City on May 16, 2025, in the closing arguments. Ventura, a high-profile witness who pleaded not guilty to sex-trafficking charges against former Sean “Diddy” Combs, was one of the prosecution’s most important witnesses in the trial. Window's tears-twisting moments and apparent sadness—both exhibited in her closed eyes—provided a vivid picture of the man accused of abuse ranging from sexual verbal manipulation to abusive physical force. Common charges against the singer, 55, are allegations that include assault, torture and sexual abuse, which was the main complaint against him. Combs has pleaded not guilty to charges of sex trafficking, racketeering conspiracy and transportation to engage in prostitution. He faces up to a life sentence in the case.

Ventura started her testimony May 13, 2025, recounting how she and Combs first met. When she was 19 years old, the teenager “met Combs, ” before becoming a friend of his. He’d just signed her to his record label, Bad Boy Records. Seconds later, she and Combs began dating, she said. He started hitting her all the time, she told prosecutors, and she accused him of sexually coercing, beating her up and controlling her mental state. The most striking piece of evidence in the trial came from hotel surveillance footage from March 2016, which showed Combs assaulting her in a Los Angeles hotel hallway. It showed Combs grabbing, shoving, kicking and dragging her, and showed how much he loved her. In a subsequent brief affidavit, Ventura testified that she tried to leave a “freak off”—“Combs’ way of saying multiple-day sex parties in which he would lure women out of their houses and bring them home by prostitutes, ” she said in court.

Her testimony also revealed the nature of those “freak offs” that she said “counted in the ‘hundreds’ of them” and left her feeling “disgusted” and “humiliated. ”She said Combs coerced her to participate, often as drugs took their toll on her, and insisted she hire male escorts to accompany her in the “freak offs, ” which he orchestrated and sometimes taped. She described applying heated baby oil every five minutes in order to simulate the scent of the oil to Combs, though she denied that other women had heard of the oil itself being filled with drugs. However, Ventura told jurors she did not consent to the sessions because her fear of being taken advantage of or a desire to please Combs was the reason and that she would likely have been more violent if she did not follow through. “I feel like it would escalate the fight more and make it worse for myself, ” she told the jury.

Ventura also alleged a 2018 rape by Combs after their breakup, following a dinner in Malibu meant to provide “closure.” She described years of control, including Combs limiting her music career — despite a 10-album deal with Bad Boy, she released only one album in 2006 — and isolating her socially. She testified about seeking trauma therapy in 2023 at Willow House, a 45-day in-patient program in Arizona, to address “horrible flashbacks” and heal from intimacy and relationship issues. Her emotional state was evident as she cried on the stand, particularly when discussing the “freak offs” and the 2016 assault, which left her with a black eye and a fat lip. She read aloud a text she sent Combs afterward: “You are sick for thinking it is okay what you’ve done. Just stay away from me.”

In their closing arguments at the case on Tuesday, the defense lawyers Marc Agnifilo and Anna Estevao accused Ventura of participating, by invitation only, in the “freak offs. ” They reference texts “whole months ago” saying they like each other and “completely love each other, ” one of them asking to take more drugs when the other fell asleep. More shockingly, the defense argues Combs, particularly in 2016, may have been hurt and relapsed, due in large part to the withdrawal from opiates, according to the Washington Post. Agnifilo and Estevao repeatedly claimed that Combs was driven by jealousy or greed in the fall. Ventura dismissed those claims by saying her rage was motivated by the need to escape abuse, not because she had feelings for him or felt he should, according to The Post.

Along with Ventura’s testimony, the prosecution called others, including Yasin Binda, a Homeland Security agent who seized Combs’s cash of $9,000, illegal drugs, lubricants, and ”mood lights” from his hotel room during his arrest in September 2024. Combs’s former “Diddy-Dirty Money” and “Danity Kane” group member, Dawn Richard, also gave evidence saying she watched Combs assault Ventura in 2009, beating her over a late dinner for several hours. Still, Richard was only allowed to testify for part of her evidence. In any case, the purpose of this testimony was to prove a case of commulative domestic violence.

Ventura’s account ended with a statement from her attorney, Douglas Wigdor, who spoke outside of court about her supporting statement expressing hope that she was not the only one that her words would give strength to. She will remember what she claims Combs did to her, and always, sore in her healing process yet algid in her resolve to activate others. One of the attorneys stated that, in their opnion, her pregnancy and emotional appeal may affect the jury, while the defense’s argument fixed on the idea of her claiming to Settlements and donating affection towards Combs aimed suggesting doubt. The trial is expected to take from eight to ten weeks. It proceeds with other testimonies as the accusants build a theory suggesting Combs controlled a criminal structure which a network of supporters sustained.