What Are the ‘Freak-Offs’ at the Core of the Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Case?

The term first came to public awareness in November 2023, when the singer Cassie filed a lawsuit accusing Sean Combs, her onetime boyfriend and record label boss, of years of sexual and physical abuse: “freak-off.”

According to the suit by Cassie, who was born Casandra Ventura, this was what Mr. Combs called the highly choreographed sexual encounters that he directed “to engage in a fantasy of his called ‘voyeurism.’” They involved costumes, like masks and lingerie. “Copious amounts of drugs,” including Ecstasy and ketamine. The hiring of male prostitutes. Mr. Combs watching and recording the events on a phone while he masturbated.

Freak-offs have become a central part of the government’s case, which charges Mr. Combs with sex trafficking, racketeering conspiracy and transportation to engage in prostitution. Mr. Combs has pleaded not guilty, and his lawyers have strongly denied that any of his sexual encounters with women were not consensual.

In much-anticipated court testimony this week, Ms. Ventura — who is visibly pregnant with her third child — described the freak-offs in sometimes excruciating terms. During hours of testimony on Tuesday, she cried and occasionally dabbed her eyes with tissue.

The first freak-off happened when she was 22, when Mr. Combs hired a male stripper from Las Vegas to come to a home that Mr. Combs was renting in Los Angeles, she testified. Ms. Ventura said she wore a masquerade-style mask and provocative clothing from a “sex store,” and that she and the man took Ecstasy and drank alcohol before they had sex and Mr. Combs watched.

The freak-offs “made me feel worthless,” Ms. Ventura testified, “like I didn’t have anything else to offer” Mr. Combs.