← Fame Under Fire
Fame Under Fire
Cassie claims Diddy abused and blackmailed her
00:21:50
Cassie Ventura has given a second day of evidence in the trial of Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs
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- [00:01]
Anushka Mutanda Doughty
BBC Sounds Music Radio podcasts. Hello, and welcome back to Diddy on Trial from BBC Sounds with me, Anushka Mutandadhy here at the Federal Courthouse in Lower Manhattan in New York City. Just a warning. This episode contains mentions of suicide, descriptions of violence, sexual violence, including rape, as well as drug use, and graphic descriptions of sex. Now it's the second day of Cassie's testimony and the court has just broken for lunch. Cassie Ventura is Sean Diddy Combs, former partner of more than 10 years, and she's the prosecution's main witness for this case. We know that lots of Sean Combs family are here today, but his daughters, who have been present in the courtroom for most of the proceedings so far, are not. It's also raining heavily, so we're under an umbrella.
- [00:53]
Neda Taufik
Now.
- [00:53]
Anushka Mutanda Doughty
We've seen lots of your comments asking why we always include such a long denial at this point in the program. Well, that's because as it stands, Sean Diddy Combs is an innocent man. It's innocent until proven guilty. He's accused of sex trafficking, transportation for prostitution, and racketeering with conspiracy. He denies all the charges and says he's never sexually assaulted anyone, man or woman, adult or minor. If found guilty, he could end up spending the rest of his life behind bars. The only thing we do know is that Sean Combs assaulted Cassie, his ex girlfriend, in a hotel hallway in 2016. And today she's been talking about what happened after that assault took place, including the police being called. The BBC's New York correspondent, Neda Talfik, was in court to watch it and she's here with me now. What exactly has gone down in that courtroom this morning?
- [01:38]
Neda Taufik
We got some more graphic detail in Cassie's testimony. She took us right back to that that night with the hotel security footage capturing Diddy beating her in the hotel room. And the jury saw selfies that she took of herself. And in the selfie, she's wearing a hood, she's wearing black sunglasses, and you can see her swollen fat lip. And she describes how the sunglasses hit her black eye, but that she took the selfie when she was in an Uber heading back to her apartment and a friend met her there and actually did call the police. But Cassie said she just didn't feel at the time that she could tell them who had done that to her. And she goes on and really just is asked in more detail about the freak offs. There was a really just startling point in the morning where she's given a binder and she has to go one by one through the male escorts. And she said she felt it was her job, that she had to. She was expected, expected to hire these escorts for these freak offs. And one by one she goes through the men, some of the names she remembers, she goes through where they participated in the freak offs, which cities, which really goes to the kind of heart of the charge from prosecutors about the transport to engage in prostitution. She really details, you know, how she felt throughout all of this. She says there were times where she was on ketamine, the drug, because she wanted to disassociate from these freak offs. She didn't want to do them. And she was on other drugs and began taking opioids, became addicted to them because she wanted to forget about the freak offs. She got sores in her mouth, gastrointestinal issues, UTIs, and even with those urinary tract infections. She said Diddy would force her to continue the freak offs. So really getting a deeper understanding of what Cassie says she went through throughout these years.
- [03:37]
Anushka Mutanda Doughty
And in regards to the 2016 CCTV footage, what did she say about how Diddy reacted after that incident?
- [03:44]
Neda Taufik
Yeah, that was a really interesting point because they actually displayed in court the text message between both of them. And in it he is begging her, call me, call me. I have six kids, he tells her. He says, you know, they're going to arrest me. Call me, call me. And she doesn't respond to several of those messages, but he kept being insistent and messaging. And at one point she basically tells him, you know, please just leave me alone. I don't know how you think what you've done is okay, just leave me alone. And he says, if you don't pick up, you'll never hear my voice again. Please call. I would never ignore your calls.
- [04:24]
Anushka Mutanda Doughty
A lot of what we heard from Cassie yesterday was talking about why she felt she had to continue with the freak offs, even though she was uncomfortable. And she talked a lot about the force element of the coercion charge that the prosecution have against Diddy. There is also the element of blackmail that she touched on yesterday, but she didn't go into it as much. But I'm hearing from our digital reporters that she did speak about that in court.
- [04:46]
Neda Taufik
You know, there is an instance, for example, where they had a fight at the Akan Film Festival. And during the fight, he actually kicked her off of the boat they were staying on. She didn't have her passport, she didn't have her shoes. And on the flight home, obviously she still was upset with him, she says, but he found a way to sit next to her and told her that she had to behave and to do that. He essentially showed on the plane, a commercial flight with other people around, one of the freak off videos to her and threatened to release it again if she didn't behave. That was just one instance that she mentioned. But she said that over the course of the relationship, she said one time would have been too many. But several times he threatened to release the freak off videos. And prosecutors, you know, asked her about, you know, why that would have been such a horrific thing for her. And she says, you know, I didn't want my mother to see it. The videos, you know, she talks about how it would have portrayed her. She says it made her look like a slut. So for a woman obviously with a career, she said it would have been damaging to her career, her reputation, that she didn't want to do the freak offs and didn't want anybody to know about it.
- [06:01]
Anushka Mutanda Doughty
And you mentioned there about her taking ketamine. When she was taking the ketamine, did. Was it Diddy who was supplying her and how did he feel about her taking it? What does she allege?
- [06:11]
Neda Taufik
Yeah, there is a text message exchange from January 26th of 2016 where Diddy actually tells her, you know, we have to have a proper freak off, he says, without K in the text message and tells her, you know, please don't be mad. And she explains through questioning by prosecutors to the jury that K is for ketamine and that she took it because she kind of wanted a timeout from the freak offs. She said it was her preferred drug because it helped her disassociate. It gave her this what she called a K hole where she was so high that she couldn't do anything, she couldn't have those sex acts. And she said, you know, that's essentially why Diddy didn't like her taking it.
- [06:56]
Anushka Mutanda Doughty
We heard yesterday from Cassie that she felt like these freak offs became a full time job and occupation and she had to give up a lot of stuff to do with her career. Am I right in thinking she also spoke about things she had to give up in her personal life as well?
- [07:08]
Neda Taufik
Yeah, there was one instance where she talks about her 29th birthday, a birthday where she said she had a surprise dinner at a restaurant in Los Angeles with her friends. She didn't think Diddy was even going. She thought that it was just going to be a time for her and her friends and she wanted to go to a club afterward and do karaoke. And she said as they were headed to the club. He was insisting that he wanted to go do a freak off but she told him, you know, no, I don't want to do it. I'm going out with my friends, we're doing karaoke. But she said even as they were there, as she was there with her friends, that he kept pulling her out and insisting he wanted to go do a freak off. And she said she didn't want the burden of doing it. She just wanted to celebrate her birthday. But she said she gave up because he pulled her out so many times and he was there with his security and she just, you know, realized he's not going to stop.
- [08:00]
Anushka Mutanda Doughty
And how was she when she was giving this testimony? Obviously it's extremely intimate moments that she's talking about.
- [08:04]
Neda Taufik
Yeah. You know, it's interesting. When she first came in, there was a few moments before questions started and I could really sense a bit of nervous energy. You know, she was fidgeting in the chair. Of course, she's. She's very visibly pregnant, clearly toward the end of her third term. But she was shifting in her chair, she took off her jacket. She was playing with her hair. She was taking the bottle of water and opening it and drinking. So a little bit of nervous energy. But then as she started answering the questions, she was very calm and composed, answered them clearly. She did wipe off a few tears at the end of the morning so you could see the toll it was taking on her because these are very, very graphic and intimate details she's having to share to a full corporate.
- [08:51]
Anushka Mutanda Doughty
And how was Diddy's reaction to Cassie in the courtroom?
- [08:54]
Neda Taufik
Well, when Cassie walked in to take her seat on the witness stand, he didn't look at her. He looked straightforward. He is quite animated with his family again today with his sons and his mother there behind him. He blew them kisses and, you know, mouthed to them. But when it came to Cassie, he didn't look in her direction.
- [09:15]
Anushka Mutanda Doughty
Well, we're hearing that it's not the end of her testimony and this might take all day. I know you've got a live interview to do right now, but we're going to catch up with you later on in the day to find out. The rest of her testimony goes. Neda, thank you so much.
- [09:24]
Neda Taufik
My pleasure.
- [09:36]
Anushka Mutanda Doughty
It's 5:30. We're stood outside the court. Cassie's testimony has finished and cross examination will start tomorrow. It's absolutely chucking it down but we've managed to grab Nedda. So Cassie's testimony in the after lunch began speaking more about blackmail. And we saw some examples of that alleged examples of that, what did we see?
- [09:56]
Neda Taufik
Yeah, I think one of the more striking examples came when she was describing what happened after Diddy found out she had been seeing the rapper Kid Cudi. And he didn't take that very well. And she describes the aftermath of that. She says that she sent an email to her mother on December 23rd of 2011 with the email subject threats. And she said that Diddy had basically said he was going to hurt Kid Cudi and her, that he was going to release the explicit sex tapes of the freak offs. And he said he was going to release two sex tapes, one on Christmas Day, one, one on soon after that. She put all of this in the email to her mother expressing that he said he would hurt her and Scott not by his own hands, but that he would be out of the country when it happened. So jurors got to see that email and got to hear from Cassie and just to understand again how those blackmail claims she's made happen in real time.
- [11:01]
Anushka Mutanda Doughty
Yeah. And throughout this, Kid Cudi was referred to as Scott, and everybody was made aware of who that is. She was also asked about if she'd seen Diddy become physical with others. And they brought up some examples of her friends. Barna Bongolin, that's a name that might sound familiar to some of our listeners. We've done a program on a civil lawsuit that she filed. What did they say about Barna?
- [11:21]
Neda Taufik
Yeah, Cassie said that she saw Diddy get physical with several others, including her friend Bona. And she painted this picture of Diddy picking up Bona under her arms and bringing her over the balcony railing and then throwing her back onto the balcony onto the patio furniture. So it was quite a striking scene that she painted, but it was a very brief one.
- [11:47]
Anushka Mutanda Doughty
Something else that they went into in a little bit more detail was the opioid addiction that she said she developed.
- [11:53]
Neda Taufik
Yeah, that's right. She said that over their 10 year plus relationship that she was heavily reliant on opiates. She stopped and 20, 22. But Sean Diddy Combs had provided her the drugs. She had used them on her own too. And she said that he would get doctors to write them scripts and they would rotate whose names were used on those scripts to not raise any red flags. So again, this idea that Diddy, whether it was through his power, his notoriety or his connections, was able to get several doctors to write scripts for opioids.
- [12:33]
Anushka Mutanda Doughty
And then there were a series of sort of short admissions of certain things that had happened. It started with an Incident at her brother's birthday that she goes into, talking about her and an altercation she got into.
- [12:47]
Neda Taufik
Yeah, that's right. You know, the prosecutors typically want to get everything out before the defense starts cross examination. Right. Anything that's potentially unflattering or hurtful to their case, and they want their witness to appear to be extremely credible. So they had Cassie talk about, you know, instances where she has been physically violent in the past. And she spoke about one incident in particular at her brother's birthday party. She said that she was drunk, and her mother had pointed out that there was a woman filming her in that state. She said that she went and pulled the woman out of her car and punched her.
- [13:31]
Anushka Mutanda Doughty
They also flashed up a picture of Cassie's door and a knife being slotted into the door. And she spoke about why that was.
- [13:40]
Neda Taufik
Yeah, she said that this was a photo from 2018, and she said she was getting a lot of unannounced visits by Diddy at that point. And her state of mind was, look, I'm going to, as she put it, kill two birds with one stone. She said the knife was a way to have an extra lock on the door, essentially, but also to have a weapon. If he came by.
- [14:03]
Anushka Mutanda Doughty
Okay, it's really coming down now, but we're going to carry on because we saw some other really sort of striking exchanges and messages during this testimony. Then they go on to talk about an incident that happened in 2018 and a dinner that Cassie and Diddy had together.
- [14:17]
Neda Taufik
Yeah, and just to warn our listeners, this is pretty graphic, so just to take caution if they don't want to hear these details. But Cassie outlines how, after several years of seeing Diddy with another woman, she finally caught him with her and decided to end things. And at that dinner you mentioned, it was at a restaurant in Malibu in August. She thought they were coming together for a closure conversation is the way she put it. She said he had, you know, tried to convince her to go with him to Burning man, but otherwise he was being nice, playful, giving romantic vibes, she said. But she was seeing her now husband at the time, and she thought it went rather well. But then she took a pause on the stand, actually, for a moment before describing what happened next. She said she went inside the living room. He came in, and then he raped her on the floor of her living room. And she just remembered crying and saying no. She says it happened very fast, that his eyes went black, he wasn't himself. She says it was like somebody taking something from her. And prosecutors asked her what he did when, you know, she was crying. And she said he continued. And they asked, what did he do when you said no? And she said he continued. And that after he just got up and left when he was done. So it was a very dramatic point, obviously, of the testimony, Cassie detailing for the first time, really, we knew her allegations against him. But, you know, hearing her talk about.
- [16:03]
Anushka Mutanda Doughty
This for the first time, and she was very emotional when she told the court that. The prosecution then asked her, were you ever intimate with Diddy again? And she said that she was, yeah.
- [16:13]
Neda Taufik
And again, this is right. The prosecution getting ahead of the defense. She says, yes, she was intimate one more time with him. That they were at a friend's dinner, they were having a nice night, everything was smooth, he was happy. And that she ended up going to his house. And they asked her, you know, why she was able to be intimate with him again? And she said, look, we were together for over 10 years. We were very connected. You don't just turn off those feelings. She couldn't just all of a sudden hate him.
- [16:45]
Anushka Mutanda Doughty
And Cassie then reflects on the time after the relationship ended and processing some of the things that she alleged happened to her. And she spoke about a time in 2023 where she says it all just became a bit too much for her.
- [17:00]
Neda Taufik
Yeah, you know, this is the point where she really starts sobbing on the stand, and it just gets a bit too much. And just as recently as 2023, she says that she wanted to take her own life. And she detailed that for the jury how that played out. She just talked about just constantly having these traumatic flashbacks to her relationship with Diddy and how it became too much and how she was home, her kids were sleeping, and she told her husband, alex, you know, you can do this without me. You don't need me. She, you know, at that point went into some more details, but said eventually it was her husband that stopped her. And they realized, you know, she needed to get proper help, she needed to go into therapy.
- [17:51]
Anushka Mutanda Doughty
And Cassie talks about the process that she goes through to kind of process all of this trauma. She speaks about trauma therapy, and she says one of the things that she was doing was writing it all down, saying it took the form of a book in chapters. She said that she wanted Diddy to read this book and that she took steps to kind of make sure that that happened.
- [18:08]
Neda Taufik
Yeah, Cassie was clearly going through therapy, clearly wanting to kind of get some closure on this chapter in her life. And she said that she sent Diddy the book because she wanted him to understand how she felt, what she was feeling throughout this relationship and what she said he did to her. She sent it to him, but even reached out to an assistant to see if he had read it. And they seem to have, in her telling, not have taken it very seriously, saying, oh, we didn't realize it was from you. We thought this was just a joke. And so Cassie details how she then decided, all right, I'm going to file a civil suit and I'm going to make it for a lot of money, $30 million, and maybe that will get his attention. And she said, ultimately that's what she did. And within a day, as we already know, Diddy decided to settle that civil suit. And he did it for $20 million, but without admitting any wrongdoing.
- [19:07]
Anushka Mutanda Doughty
So and also in the defenses of opening statement, they spoke about Cassie's financial situation when she filed the civil lawsuit, and they were offering up the narrative that it was a cash grab. We've heard this before from Diddy's people as well about lots of different civil lawsuits. So them bringing this up and talking about the money, like you've said before, it's kind of getting ahead of the cross examination before it happens. Is that what you were thinking when. When you heard this?
- [19:31]
Neda Taufik
Oh, absolutely. The defense said, you know, look at Cassie's communications in real time. She was made a choice to stay with him despite the domestic abuse. She want stay with him will prove that through their communications. And you'll see that at the time she decided to file this civil suit, it was because she was struggling financially. She had moved back in with her mother, and that was her motive. And this is all, again, the defense trying to plant that reasonable doubt in jurors minds and to be able to frame it in the way that she did, why she asked for such a high amount. You know, they made that decision that they wanted to have that out there.
- [20:08]
Anushka Mutanda Doughty
And then they closed by asking her a few different questions. The first one that the prosecution asked was, Cassie, why are you here today? And she gave a pretty long answer, quite a detailed answer.
- [20:20]
Neda Taufik
Yeah. You know, she said that she couldn't carry the shame, the guilt anymore. She said the way that she was guided to treat people like they were disposable, you know, she still carried that kind of guilt, guilt from that. So clearly for Cassie, she thinks this was, she says, the right thing. It was the right thing for her to do.
- [20:44]
Anushka Mutanda Doughty
Neda, thank you so much. That was neda Taufik, the BBC's New York correspondent. Well, that's it for today. Thanks for listening to Diddy on Trial from BBC Sounds with me, Anoushka Mutanda Doughty. Make sure you subscribe and turn on your push notifications so you never miss a thing. Now, if you're listening in the uk, details of organizations offering information and support with some of the issues raised are available at BBC.co.uk actionline.
- [21:17]
Carol Cadwalader
In today's digital world, it's easier than ever to invade someone's life and far harder to escape. Anyone determined enough to do harm can find a way to do harm. I'm Carol Cadwalader, an investigative journalist. In this podcast, I follow the story of Hannah, whose life was turned up down by an anonymous stalker.
- [21:37]
Anushka Mutanda Doughty
I no longer know who I can trust.
- [21:38]
Carol Cadwalader
What began as one woman's nightmare became a chilling investigation into deception, control and the faceless power of the Internet Stalked. Listen on BBC Sounds.