Domestic Violence

Subterms

    Latest story

    138 Shares25 Views

    Kid Cudi Is Expected to Testify in the Sean Combs Trial

    by

    The rapper is scheduled to take the stand on Thursday to describe how his car was “blown up” after a threat by a jealous Mr. Combs.Kid Cudi, the rapper whose brief relationship with Casandra Ventura is said to have led to angry threats by Sean Combs, is expected to take the witness stand on Thursday in the music mogul’s sex-trafficking and racketeering trial.The rapper, whose real name is Scott Mescudi, is part of an important narrative at the heart of the racketeering conspiracy charge against Mr. Combs. The government has accused Mr. Combs of running a criminal enterprise for two decades and said his associates set fire to a rival’s car by slicing open the convertible top and dropping in a Molotov cocktail.In 2023, after Ms. Ventura filed the lawsuit that kicked off Mr. Combs’s legal troubles, Mr. Mescudi confirmed that his car had exploded. But he has yet to speak publicly about the details of his role in the case.Mr. Combs has pleaded not guilty to all charges against him, and his lawyers have said he was “simply not involved” in the allegations of arson put forward by prosecutors.While on the witness stand last week, Ms. Ventura, the singer known as Cassie, recalled the chaotic aftermath once Mr. Combs learned about her budding relationship with Mr. Mescudi in late 2011. She said Mr. Combs made the discovery while looking through her phone at the site of a “freak-off,” the sex marathons with male prostitutes at the center of the case.Ms. Ventura testified that Mr. Combs lunged at her with a wine bottle opener and, later that day, threatened to release sexually explicit videos of her in retaliation.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    More stories

    • 175 Shares62 Views

      in Music

      At the Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Trial, Cassie’s Mother and Others to Testify About Abuse

      by

      Prosecutors are aiming to fill in the picture of the mogul’s relationship with Casandra Ventura by questioning his former assistant and Ms. Ventura’s mother.As Sean Combs’s trial moves into its seventh day of testimony, investigators pursuing him on racketeering conspiracy and sex-trafficking charges are trying to sketch a wider picture of his time with the singer Casandra Ventura, who was his off-and-on girlfriend for more than a decade.Ms. Ventura, who performs music as Cassie, testified for four days last week; now witnesses including another artist signed to Mr. Combs’s label, Ms. Ventura’s estranged best friend and a former personal assistant to Mr. Combs have been asked by prosecutors to corroborate, and in some cases amplify, aspects of Ms. Ventura’s account. Her mother is also expected to testify this week.The first witness on Tuesday is scheduled to be David James, the assistant who took the stand late in the day on Monday. Mr. James described his duties as an aide to Mr. Combs in terms that resembled those of many high-profile, high-pressure corporate jack-of-all-trades. He rose early, arranged Mr. Combs’s calendar and kept detailed spreadsheets of his boss’s travel preferences. At his job interview, he told Mr. Combs, “I can’t stop, I won’t stop” — an expression of his work ethic wrapped in a nod to a hit song by the Lox, one of the signature rap acts for Bad Boy, Mr. Combs’s company. But even in the few minutes Mr. James was on the stand, he testified of hearing Ms. Ventura express frustration at her situation. On a cigarette break with her on a dock near Mr. Combs’s Miami mansion, soon after he started the job in 2007, he said she remarked to him, “Man, this lifestyle is crazy.” Mr. James said he agreed, and that Ms. Ventura added, “I can’t get out,” and that Mr. Combs “oversees so much of my life.”Prosecutors have worked to establish that Mr. Combs had coercive power over Ms. Ventura, in part because she loved him, but also because he held the reins on her career and physically beat her.Mr. Combs has acknowledged the violence, but he has denied the sex trafficking and other accusations of criminal conduct that have been lodged against him. His lawyers say Mr. Combs engaged in perhaps unconventional marathon sex sessions with Ms. Ventura, but they say it was fully consensual and he has pleaded not guilty to all of the charges.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 163 Shares75 Views

      in Music

      Up Next at the Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Trial: Dawn Richard and Former Employees

      by

      After four days with Casandra Ventura, known as Cassie, on the stand, prosecutors will be seeking to corroborate her testimony with additional witnesses.As the second week of Sean Combs’s racketeering conspiracy and sex-trafficking trial begins, the first witness is set to be Dawn Richard, a singer in two music groups backed by Mr. Combs who says she saw him physically abuse his former girlfriend, Casandra Ventura.A performer in the now-defunct groups Danity Kane and Diddy — Dirty Money, Ms. Richard began her testimony on Friday, recalling an incident from 2009 in which she said Mr. Combs attempted to hit Ms. Ventura, known as the singer Cassie, with a skillet, then punched and kicked her.“She went into fetal position — you could see she was literally trying to hide her face or her head,” Ms. Richard testified. She also said that Mr. Combs threatened her and a bandmate to keep silent about the event, saying he told them that “where he comes from, people go missing if they say things like that, if they talk.”Ms. Richard filed a lawsuit against Mr. Combs last year, shortly before he was arrested. She accused him in the suit of threatening her, groping her and flying into “frenzied, unpredictable rages” while he oversaw her career. The girl group Danity Kane was formed during the third iteration of Mr. Combs’s MTV reality show “Making the Band.”After the jury had been dismissed on Friday, a lawyer for Mr. Combs called Ms. Richard’s accusation of abuse from 2009 a “drop-dead lie,” noting that Ms. Ventura had not mentioned it during her four days on the witness stand.Ms. Richard is the first of a series of government witnesses scheduled for this week who are expected to testify about what they saw of Ms. Ventura’s 11-year on-and-off relationship with Mr. Combs.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 138 Shares78 Views

      in Music

      Combs Defense Seeks to Undermine Cassie’s Rape Allegation as Testimony Ends

      by

      The singer spent four days on the stand recounting what she described as an 11-year relationship in which she came to feel more like a sex worker than a girlfriend.Defense lawyers for Sean Combs pushed on Friday to undermine one of the most damaging allegations in the music mogul’s trial on sex-trafficking and racketeering charges — that he raped his longtime girlfriend, the singer Casandra Ventura, in 2018.On the last of four grueling days of Ms. Ventura’s testimony, Mr. Combs’s defense team pointed out inconsistencies in her recounting of when such an incident had occurred. They also noted that Ms. Ventura, an R&B singer known professionally as Cassie, never mentioned anything about an attack in a flurry of emotional breakup text messages that the couple exchanged soon afterward.The nature and history of the relationship between Mr. Combs and Ms. Ventura is central to the government’s case. Prosecutors have depicted the music mogul as a sexual predator whose employees helped stage marathon drug-fueled sessions, known as “freak-offs,” during which Ms. Ventura had sex with male prostitutes while Mr. Combs watched, and sometimes masturbated.Mr. Combs has pleaded not guilty to all the charges, and his lawyers have portrayed Ms. Ventura as someone who fell deeply in love, participated willingly in the freak-offs but then, bitter with jealousy, has recast the relationship as a grim 11 years of beatings, blackmail and coerced sex.In that vein, the defense questioned Ms. Ventura about consensual sexual intercourse she had with Mr. Combs about a month after what she said was a night when Mr. Combs raped her in her home. Ms. Ventura was already dating her now husband, Alex Fine, at the time of the consensual sex with Mr. Combs, and she testified that while together with Mr. Combs, she received, but didn’t answer, a FaceTime call from Mr. Fine.“Your now husband didn’t know that you were with Mr. Combs at the time, correct?” a defense lawyer, Anna Estevao, asked Ms. Ventura. She replied that Mr. Fine eventually found out about her rape allegation and the subsequent intercourse she had with Mr. Combs. Ms. Estevao said Mr. Fine punched a wall in response.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 163 Shares74 Views

      in Music

      5 Takeaways From Cassie’s Final Day of Testimony in Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Trial

      by

      Casandra Ventura, the singer known professionally as Cassie, ended four days of sometimes grueling testimony about being abused by Mr. Combs.The first week of Sean Combs’s sex-trafficking trial was dominated by four days of searing testimony by Casandra Ventura, the singer known professionally as Cassie, who told the jury that he had raped and abused her and subjected her to degrading marathon sex sessions with male prostitutes known as “freak-offs.”Ms. Ventura, who is eight and a half months pregnant, stepped down from the witness stand on Friday afternoon after a long and sometimes meandering cross-examination by lawyers for Mr. Combs, who has pleaded not guilty.Here are five takeaways:Mr. Combs’s lawyers suggested she was a willing participant in the “freak-offs.”In contrast to the prosecution’s questioning of Ms. Ventura, which traced a narrative of a troubled relationship from its origins until a painful collapse after years of abuse, the defense’s cross-examination frequently jumped back and forth in time. By zooming in on dozens of text messages from throughout her years in a relationship with Mr. Combs, his lawyers tried to paint a very different picture of the freak-offs.In many of those messages, which could be flirtatious in tone or matter-of-fact in setting up logistics, his lawyers noted, Ms. Ventura appeared to express willingness, or even excitement, about the sexual encounters.But Ms. Ventura pushed back, saying that she was just acceding to his requests. “I would say loving FOs were just words at that point,” she said, commenting on a 2017 text message chain about planning a freak-off, or “FO.”The sometimes repetitive pattern of the cross-examination led to a complaint by prosecutors. In a letter to the judge early Friday, they said that the “inefficiency of cross-examination” raised the possibility of a mistrial if Ms. Ventura went into labor before the questioning was completed. The judge urged the parties to stick to a schedule of completing Ms. Ventura’s testimony by the end of the week, and it ended midafternoon Friday.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 138 Shares91 Views

      in Music

      Cassie Confronted by Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs’s Lawyer Over ‘Freak-Offs’ During Trial

      by

      During cross-examination, the defense team depicted Casandra Ventura as fully engaged in staging and participating in the marathon sex sessions she says were abusive.Lawyers for Sean Combs worked on Thursday in court to portray his former girlfriend, Casandra Ventura, as a willing and full participant in sex marathons with prostitutes, as they sought to undermine her harrowing account of an abusive, coercive relationship riddled with violence.Ms. Ventura’s credibility is central to the government’s case, in which they have charged Mr. Combs, the music mogul, with sex trafficking and racketeering. Earlier this week she told the jury of eight men and four women of how she had suffered through hundreds of degrading sexual encounters and many injuries out of a misguided attempt to please a man she loved.But on the fourth day of Mr. Combs’s trial, the defense tried to recast Ms. Ventura, a singer known professionally as Cassie, as not nearly the victim she had portrayed herself to be. During cross-examination, Anna Estevao, one of Mr. Combs’s lawyers, repeatedly had her read text messages in which she expressed graphic enthusiasm for their sexual encounters, including the now famed “freak-offs” involving paid escorts.“I’m always ready to freak off lolol,” Ms. Ventura said in a message from 2009.In another exchange from around the same time, Ms. Ventura expressed her excitement in graphically sexual terms, and he told her: “I can’t wait to watch you. I want you to get real hott.”She answered: “Me too. I just want it to be uncontrollable.”Jurors gazed at the barrage of text messages, which were displayed on screens in front of them, sometimes leaning forward to get a closer look.Mr. Combs has pleaded not guilty to the charges and his defense has argued that the government is trying to criminalize unconventional, but lawful, sexual relations between consenting adults. In her first two days on the stand, Ms. Ventura said that she might have feigned interest at times to avoid Mr. Combs’s anger, and she recited a litany of incidents in which she was beaten when she failed.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 113 Shares65 Views

      in Music

      Diddy’s Lawyers Work to Establish Cassie’s Agency in Freak-Offs

      by

      On the first day of cross-examination, a defense lawyer asked Casandra Ventura about messages she wrote to the music mogul ahead of their sex sessions.It was only about a half-hour into the cross-examination of Casandra Ventura that a lawyer for Sean Combs drew on messages the couple exchanged, in an attempt to establish one of the defense’s key arguments in the case: that Ms. Ventura was a willing participant in the sex marathons known as “freak-offs.”Anna Estevao, the defense lawyer questioning Ms. Ventura on Thursday, presented a message the singer wrote to Mr. Combs in 2009, that read, “I’m always ready to freak off lolol.”In another exchange from around that time, Ms. Ventura expressed her excitement in graphic terms, and he told her: “I can’t wait to watch you. I want you to get real hott.”She answered: “Me too. I just want it to be uncontrollable.”Conversations like those, which could involve both explicit flirtation and logistical planning about their meetings and preparations, were “somewhat typical” for the two, Ms. Ventura testified.Those messages showed a very different side of the relationship than what Ms. Ventura described in the first two days of her testimony, under questioning by prosecutors. Over hours of sometimes excruciating testimony, she said that Mr. Combs had forced her to take part in “hundreds” of these episodes over about 10 years, and used violence and threats of releasing explicit videos from the freak-offs as what she called “blackmail materials.”Mr. Combs, who is charged with sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy, has pleaded not guilty, and his lawyers have vehemently denied that any of his sexual encounters were not consensual.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 138 Shares93 Views

      in Music

      What to Expect From Cassie’s Cross-Examination at Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs’s Trial

      by

      Lawyers for Sean Combs are expected to focus on moments of her agency in the relationship and on jealousy related to infidelities.Across two days on the witness stand, Casandra Ventura, a longtime girlfriend of Sean Combs, delivered hours of testimony about a relationship filled with harrowing physical abuse and meticulous control, and defined by the expectation that she would fulfill his sexual fantasies.Ms. Ventura, the government’s star witness, will now face questions from Mr. Combs’s lawyers. Some might even come directly from Mr. Combs, who has been passing notes to his legal team throughout the proceedings.The defense has acknowledged responsibility for domestic violence — including against Ms. Ventura — but has vehemently denied that his behavior warrants the charges against him of sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy.The lawyer expected to question Ms. Ventura is Anna Estevao, who has rarely been the lead voice for the team during court proceedings to this point. She faces the delicate task of challenging the testimony of a visibly pregnant woman who testified that years of physical violence and sexual coercion by Mr. Combs led her to such emotional distress that she considered suicide.Here are a few things we can expect from the cross-examination.The defense will try to highlight moments of agency.Mr. Combs is charged with sex-trafficking Ms. Ventura. To prove that, the government has to convince the jury that Mr. Combs forced or coerced her into sex parties with male prostitutes known as “freak-offs.”Ms. Ventura testified that during her relationship with Mr. Combs, she repeatedly followed his directions and felt powerless to do otherwise. But the defense is likely to try highlighting moments when she might have displayed agency.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 125 Shares109 Views

      in Music

      Cassie Testifies Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Used Sex Videos as Blackmail

      by

      Ms. Ventura, Mr. Combs’s ex-girlfriend, said he threatened to use tapes of their sexual encounters, known as “freak-offs,” to control her behavior.Casandra Ventura, the singer and model known as Cassie, told a jury in Manhattan on Wednesday that her life with Sean Combs had its moments, but was largely filled with beatings, threatened blackmail and even a rape.During more than five hours of testimony in Mr. Combs’s sex trafficking and racketeering trial, Ms. Ventura recounted how he had stomped on her in the back of his car and how she suffered a gash above her eye when he threw her against a bed frame.She also recounted how, after the pair had dinner in 2018, Mr. Combs raped her in her living room.“I just remember crying and saying no, but it was very fast,” she testified.At the end of her testimony, Ms. Ventura said through tears that after she had broken up with Mr. Combs, the trauma remained and she enrolled in treatment for drug abuse. Even so, she said, she contemplated taking her life by walking into traffic. She said her husband stopped her.Ms. Ventura told the court she stayed with Mr. Combs despite beatings and other abuse partly because of the nagging, persistent fear that videos of their sexual encounters with male prostitutes, the hundreds of “freak-offs” that she said Mr. Combs enjoyed watching and recording, would be posted online.Hers was not idle anxiety based on what she viewed Mr. Combs might be capable of, she said, but the consequence of repeated threats he had made to use the material to damage her if she deviated from his wishes. In one case, she described sitting beside him on a flight when he displayed for her videos that she thought had been destroyed.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More