Casandra Ventura’s second day of testimony included her blunt response to the mogul about his pattern of physical abuse and details of her fear of blackmail.
Casandra Ventura, the singer and model known as Cassie, testified on Wednesday in the federal trial of Sean Combs, her former boyfriend and label boss, about living with the fear of going against his wishes — and especially his sexual desires.
In her second day of testimony, Ms. Ventura said she went along with the increasingly extreme and frequent “freak-offs” demanded by Mr. Combs because she worried that he would respond with anger or physical violence and follow through on his threats to leak explicit videos of her in degrading sexual encounters.
Mr. Combs is accused of sex trafficking, racketeering conspiracy and transportation to engage in prostitution, and the government contends that Ms. Ventura and others had been coerced into participating in freak-offs and other sexual encounters with Mr. Combs. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges, and his lawyers have argued that Ms. Ventura, and other women who are part of the case, were willing participants and that his sexual arrangements were all consensual.
Ms. Ventura testified that Mr. Combs would take videos of the freak-offs — marathon sex sessions — that she participated in and that he later threatened to release what she called “blackmail material.”
During a 2013 flight from Cannes, France, she testified, Mr. Combs pulled up videos on his laptop of her in freak-offs, which she thought had been deleted. He threatened to release the videos to embarrass her.
“I just felt trapped,” she said.
During freak-offs, she said, Mr. Combs would grab her, push her down, kick her and hit her on the side of her head. At one point, she texted him, “You treat me like you’re Ike Turner,” referring to Tina Turner’s abusive husband and bandleader.
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Source: Music - nytimes.com