Cassie reveals rape, blackmail, assaults, and $20m payout in harrowing testimony at Diddy’s trial

Day two of Cassie Ventura’s testimony in Sean “Diddy” Combs’s federal sex-trafficking trial delivered harrowing revelations—accusations of rape, blackmail, violent threats, and a multimillion-dollar settlement that has rocked the music industry.

On Wednesday, Ventura told the court that Combs raped her in 2018 inside her own home—months after their breakup. She said they met for what was meant to be a final closure lunch in Malibu. But what followed was, in her words, terrifying. After returning home, she alleged, Combs raped her in the living room.

“I just remember crying and saying ‘no,’ but it was very fast,” she told the jury. She added that she wasn’t sure if Combs even noticed her crying before he ejaculated and left.

Despite the trauma, she admitted they had consensual sex once after the incident. “We’d been together 10 years,” she said quietly. “You don’t just turn feelings off.”

Her testimony painted a portrait of a powerful man capable of cruelty, coercion, and explosive violence. Ventura described Combs’s fury when he discovered her brief relationship with rapper Kid Cudi in 2011. “He said he was going to hurt us,” she told jurors, adding that Combs later claimed he’d have Cudi’s car blown up.

A year later, in January 2012, a Porsche owned by Kid Cudi was set on fire by an incendiary device.

The courtroom also revisited a now-infamous 2016 assault. Jurors were shown the surveillance footage from a Los Angeles hotel, in which Combs was seen chasing Ventura down a hallway, throwing a vase, and grabbing her by the neck before slamming her to the ground. Ventura said he screamed that she “wasn’t going to leave him.”

Text messages revealed Ventura’s desperate reaction that night: “You’re sick for thinking it’s OK to do what you did to me,” she wrote to Combs.

But Combs’s violence wasn’t confined to Ventura alone, she told the court. He allegedly assaulted his employees and her friends. In one incident, she awoke to find Combs dangling a friend over a balcony before throwing her onto patio furniture. In another, she watched him drag his assistant out of bed by force during a trip abroad.

Ventura’s disturbing account also included a glimpse into the dark underbelly of Combs’s world—his so-called “freak-offs.” These alleged sex parties became a tool of blackmail. “He would threaten to leak the videos,” Ventura said. “I feared for my career, my family… It could ruin everything I worked for.”

One chilling incident occurred on her birthday when Ventura refused to join Combs at one such event. “He reminded me of the videos,” she said. “I felt trapped. Whatever was going to not make him angry, I was going to do.”

Her 2023 civil lawsuit against Combs—which triggered the current federal investigation—was settled for $20 million, a figure publicly confirmed for the first time in court.

Now, as the trial unfolds under international scrutiny, Ventura’s testimony has laid bare the alleged pattern of abuse she endured behind the glamour of stardom. Her statements have shocked a courtroom and pierced the image of a music mogul who once sat atop the industry.

But the question that now hangs over this high-profile trial is simple and devastating: how many others knew?

As Diddy faces charges of sex trafficking, racketeering, and more, the voice of Cassie Ventura has become a central force in a trial that could permanently tarnish one of music’s most powerful names—and upend a culture long complicit in silence.