Singer Cassie is the key witness in the prosecution’s case against Sean “Diddy” Combs.
The pair were in an on-off relationship for about 11 years, from 2007 to 2018, after she signed to his label, Bad Boy Records.
She has alleged she was physically, sexually and mentally abused by Combs for most of this time, accusing him of forcing her into “hundreds” of drug-fuelled sex sessions with male escorts, known as “freak offs”, while he watched.
But his lawyers argue the singer, whose full name is Casandra Ventura, was a willing participant who consented to a “swingers lifestyle”.
Combs, 55, is charged with sex-trafficking, racketeering conspiracy and transportation to engage in prostitution. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges and denied any allegations of sexual abuse.
Image: Combs and Ms Ventura at the Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute Gala in 2015. Pic: Reuters/Lucas Jackson
The trial in Manhattan, New York, is expected to last about eight weeks, with evidence from more women who will remain anonymous to come.
It is not yet known whether Combs himself will take the stand.
Ms Ventura, 38, has consented to being named and her testimony – including allegations about an alleged attack at a hotel in 2016, where Combs was filmed on CCTV seemingly beating and dragging her as she attempted to leave a freak off – is central to the case.
Here is what we have learned from her testimony.
‘Freak offs became like a job’
During her first day of evidence, Ms Ventura told the trial that after signing what was a huge 10-album deal with Combs’s Bad Boy Records, she only ever released her first, called Cassie, in 2006.
Instead, she said, freak offs with escorts became so frequent – and required recovery time – that they were like a job.
She was 22 when, during the first year of their relationship, she said the hip-hop mogul first proposed the idea. Her “stomach churned”, she said, and she was “confused, nervous, but also loved him very much”.
To jurors, she gave graphic details of these drug and drink-fuelled encounters with male escorts, saying Combs would watch and masturbate, and often record the encounters and watch the videos back.
They could last for hours or even days, she said – the longest allegedly for four days. She says she would get no sleep during these encounters, so used drugs to keep herself awake, but also disassociated.
“Freak offs became a job where there was no space to do anything else but to recover and just try to feel normal again,” Ms Ventura said. Each time, she added, she had to recuperate from lack of sleep, alcohol, drugs “and other substances”, and “having sex with a stranger for days”.
Image: Jurors were shown images of bruises on Ms Ventura’s body. Pic: Reuters/Jane Rosenberg
Combs ‘used violence and blackmail’
Ms Ventura told jurors Combs was violent to her over the course of their relationship, giving her black eyes and bruises, kicking her and dragging her.
The hip-hop star became increasingly controlling, she said, and was allegedly abusive over the smallest perceived slights. “You make the wrong face, and the next thing I knew I was getting hit in the face,” she told the court.
When asked how frequently Combs became violent with her, Ms Ventura responded: “Too frequently.”
She said she began feeling as if she could not say no to Combs’s demands because “there were blackmail materials to make me feel like if I didn’t do it, it would be held over my head in that way or these things would become public”.
Ms Ventura described several alleged violent incidents, including one when she allegedly suffered a “pretty significant gash” above her left eye after the rapper threw her into a bed frame.
Rather than go to hospital for stitches, his security staff took her to a plastic surgeon in Beverly Hills, she said.
Jurors shown explicit images
During the second day of Ms Ventura’s testimony, the courtroom fell silent as images from freak offs were shown to jurors.
These were kept private from the public gallery so that only those who needed to see them could do so.
Combs asked Marc Agnifilo, one of his lawyers, to see a binder of the images, and thumbed through it for a few moments before handing it back.
The pictures included images of Ms Ventura with escorts.
Alleged rape after relationship ended
Ms Ventura told the court that Combs raped her at her home in Los Angeles, after she told him she was ending things.
“I just remember crying and saying no, but it was very fast,” she said, her voice trailing off.
She told jurors she did have consensual sex with the rapper on a subsequent occasion. “We’d been together for over 10 years. You just don’t turn feelings off,” she said.
Throughout her testimony she described a complex relationship with a man she loved and was desperate to please, but was also scared of. She has maintained she never wanted to have sex with strangers, but wanted to please him.
Image: Combs watches as Ms Ventura leaves for a break in her testimony. Pic: Reuters/Jane Rosenberg
Why is Cassie testifying?
Telling the courtroom, and therefore the world, about her experiences, over four days of questioning, was humiliating and difficult – prosecutor Emily Johnson asked why she put herself through it.
Ms Ventura had remained fairly calm and composed throughout her time on the stand, with a few emotional moments, but at this point she broke down as she described her “personal shame” to jurors.
“I can’t carry this anymore,” she told the court. “I can’t carry the shame, the guilt, the way he treated people like they were disposable. What’s right is right, what’s wrong is wrong. I came here to do the right thing.”
Early in 2023, she said she started suffering from “flashbacks” and had suicidal thoughts, so went to rehab and trauma therapy.
Ms Ventura sued Combs in November 2023, and settled within 24 hours. She received £20m, the trial was told.
Combs ‘threatened Cassie and Kid Cudi’
Ms Ventura’s second day of testimony also included details of how she briefly dated Scott Mescudi, better known as singer and rapper Kid Cudi, during a low point in her relationship with Combs in 2011.
Combs lunged at her with a corkscrew and kicked her in the back when he found out, jurors heard, and threatened to blow up Mescudi’s car.
These allegations were also detailed in her lawsuit, which alleged his car did “explode in his driveway” around this time.
The hotel CCTV ‘attack’
CCTV from the InterContinental Hotel in Century City, Los Angeles, filmed on 5 March 2016, was first released by CNN in May 2024 – six months after Ms Ventura filed her lawsuit and four months before Combs was charged with the crimes he is now on trial for.
It showed Combs, wearing just socks and a towel around his waist, allegedly beating and dragging Ms Ventura in a hallway.
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CCTV footage shows Diddy ‘attacking’ Cassie in hotel
She told the court this happened after she tried to leave a freak off after being hit by Combs during the session. She had the premiere coming up for her first film, The Perfect Match, the court heard.
Despite the incident, the pair were pictured at the event together.
Messages paint a complex picture
Under cross-examination from the defence, sexually explicit messages between Ms Ventura and Combs were read in court.
Some showed her expressing apparent enthusiasm about the freak off sex sessions she alleges she was forced into.
“I’m always ready to freak off,” the court heard Ms Ventura wrote in one message in August 2009.
In another, she told Combs about a freak off: “Can’t wait.”
And in another, jurors were told she described a video of one sex session with an escort as “dope”.
Messages from 4 March 2016, the day before the InterContinental Hotel incident, were also read in court.
One said: “Baby I want to FO so bad but I dont want to f*** myself up.”
Ms Ventura told the court this was damage limitation and that she wanted to keep him happy due to her upcoming film premiere.
Jurors also heard details of an email she sent in 2009, in which she expressed conflicting feelings about taking part in these sex sessions with escorts.
In the email, she told Combs she needed to trust him “beyond it just being sexual” – that in order to be more open sexually, “I need to feel safe, like home”.
She told him “the last time was a mistake but since has made me feel a little dirty, and grimy as opposed to sexual and spontaneous”.
This was the reason she was going “back and forth in my mind with wanting and not wanting to do it”, she wrote. “I get nervous that I’m just becoming the girlfriend that you get your fantasies off with.”
Diddy ‘overdosed at Playboy Mansion’
Drug use came up a lot during Ms Ventura’s testimony, and she admitted to using drugs including ketamine, ecstasy, MDMA and opiates, saying she needed them in order to get through the freak offs.
She also claimed Combs used drugs and said she believes he was addicted to opiates when they were together.
Ms Ventura told the court he was taken to hospital after overdosing on opiates at the Playboy Mansion in 2012 – something which was reported by media outlets including TMZ at the time, when it was said he had suffered a migraine.
Several bands have pulled out from the Victorious music festival just hours before their scheduled performances, following claims by Irish folk group The Mary Wallopers that they were “cut off” for displaying a Palestinian flag.
The Last Dinner Party, Cliffords, and The Academic announced on Saturday that they would no longer be performing at the annual music festival in Portsmouth following Friday’s incident.
The organisers, who said the band’s set was cut short for using a “discriminatory” chant, have since apologised and promised to make “a substantial donation to humanitarian relief efforts for the Palestinian people”.
Rock band The Last Dinner Party said they are “outraged” by the incident and would boycott the festival.
“We are outraged by the decision made to silence The Mary Wallopers yesterday at Victorious. As a band we cannot cosign political censorship and will therefore be boycotting the festival today,” they said in a statement shared on their Instagram page.
“As Gazans are deliberately plunged into catastrophic famine after two years of escalating violence, it is urgent and obvious that artists use their platform to draw attention to the cause.
“To see an attempt to direct attention away from the genocide in order to maintain an apolitical image is immensely disappointing.”
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Image: Abigail Morris, Emily Roberts, Georgia Davies, Lizzie Mayland and Aurora Nishevci of The Last Dinner Party. File pic: Reuters
The Last Dinner Party said that throughout the summer, they have used their performances to encourage their audiences to make donations to a medical charity supporting Palestinians and urged their fans “more than ever to do the same”.
The band said they are “devastated to be put in this position” and apologised to those who were hoping to see them perform.
Following The Mary Wallopers’ set, a spokesperson for Victorious said: “We spoke to the artist before the performance regarding the festival’s long-standing policy of not allowing flags of any kind at the event, but that we respect their right to express their views during the show.
“Although a flag was displayed on stage contrary to our policy, and this was raised with the artist’s crew, the show was not ended at this point, and it was the artist’s decision to stop the song.”
The Mary Wallopers claimed the festival had released a “misleading statement to the press claiming they cut our sound because of a discriminatory chant, and not the band’s call to Free Palestine”.
The band said their video “clearly shows a Victorious crew member coming on stage, interfering with our show, removing the flag from the stage and then the sound being cut following a chant of ‘Free Palestine'”.
“The same crew member is later heard in the video saying ‘you aren’t playing until the flag is removed’,” the band added.
Rock band The Academic have also pulled out of the festival, saying they could not “in good conscience” perform at “a festival that silences free speech”, while Irish band Cliffords said they “refuse to play if we are to be censored for showing our support to the people of Palestine”.
After the bands’ announcements that they were pulling out of the festival, the organisers released another statement, saying that they did not handle “the explanation of our policies sensitively or far enough in advance to allow a sensible conclusion to be reached”, and issued an apology.
The creator of a new movie about the aftermath of sexual assault says comparisons with stars including Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Michaela Coel are flattering, but “aren’t ultimately helpful”.
Eva Victor, who rose to fame after creating viral comedy videos on X, wrote and directed their debut feature – Sorry, Baby – as well as playing the lead role.
They were encouraged to both write and then direct the movie by Oscar-winning filmmaker Barry Jenkins, after he saw Victor’s videos online.
Image: Eva Victor, who first gained attention for their viral comedy videos, has released their first feature, Sorry, Baby. Pic: A24
The film was warmly received at Sundance and Cannes, and its creator was hailed a “superstar”. But along with such accolades come inevitable comparisons.
Victor told Sky News: “The thing that that moved us so much about [Fleabag star Phoebe Waller-Bridge] and about Michaela Coel and about Greta Gerwig and those people is that it’s just a true voice.”
Image: Phoebe Waller-Bridge in 2024. Pic: PA
They admit “that part of the comparison means everything”, but go on: “I’m non-binary, so I use ‘they’ and ‘she’ pronouns and I think it’s interesting that we feel pretty binary about comparisons.
“People are pretty interested in putting me in a category of women. I mean, Denzel Washington directed himself. Albert Brooks directed himself. Jodie Foster directed after acting.
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“It’s an interesting conversation, and I think maybe comparisons aren’t ultimately so helpful. But also, I’m very honoured because they’re people I desperately look up to. Overall, it’s a very, very fine comparison.“
Image: Pic: A24
‘The bad thing’ at the heart of the movie
A triple threat, Victor studied acting and playwriting at Northwestern University, Illinois, before moving to New York in 2016 where they worked on the feminist satirical website Reductress. They later landed a role in Showtime drama series Billions.
A black comedy, Sorry, Baby tells the story of Agnes, a twenty-something New England literature student – and later academic – who is sexually assaulted by her college tutor.
Dubbed “the bad thing” in the movie, the assault – which occurs off camera – is a catalyst for the movie’s storyline but never becomes its focus.
Victor has called the writing of the project, “my soul on the page” – without speaking directly about whether any real-life experience inspired it – telling Sky News: “The process you go through privately, you’re exercising something very soul-forward. It’s very exposing.”
The impact of sexual assault around the world is something Victor calls “a big, big societal tragedy”. One in four women in England and Wales experiences sexual assault in their lifetime, according to the Office for National Statistics.
Victor says: “The reason I made the film was to try to make a film about an attempt at healing and much less about a kind of violence.”
They explain: “As someone who wanted to explore the intimate feelings of recovery from something like this, the only way through for me was to really think about Agnes and what is truthful to her story.”
Image: Pic: A24
‘Less about violence, and more about love’
Several instances in the film show the system failing to effectively deal with or even fully acknowledge the abuse – first a hospital, then a university – and those scenes are handled with a lightness of touch not always applied to trauma-based stories.
Victor says: “Humour in those scenes is used as a way for punching up people in power. And these institutions that create a really difficult, painful time for people.”
In the current climate, as convicted sex offender Harvey Weinstein faces his third trial, and music star P Diddy awaits sentencing – where does Victor think the MeToo movement stands now?
Despite the movie’s themes, Victor is reticent to become a mouthpiece for the movement.
Measuring their words carefully, Victor offers a note of optimism in their answer – much like the message of the movie – looking to the future with hope, albeit in an imperfect world.
“Ithink there’s rehabilitation that is necessary for everyone, and I’m less interested in violence and punishment and much more interested in finding love and trying to hold each other.”
Sorry, Baby is in UK cinemas now.
Anyone feeling emotionally distressed or suicidal can call Samaritans for help on 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org in the UK. In the US, call the Samaritans branch in your area or 1 (800) 273-TALK.
Bridgerton creator Shonda Rhimes says filming the drama and its spin-off Queen Charlotte in England has prompted her to consider relocating to the UK.
The US producer, who is behind some of the most popular TV dramas of the past two decades, told Sky News working in Britain had been a “really welcoming experience”, adding: “I’ve been spending a little bit more time over here and I’m going to try to spend even more if I can swap my kids into a British school.
“I’m trying to figure that part out, but I do really love being here and it’s always been such a great experience.”
Image: Rege-Jean Page and Phoebe Dynevor as Simon Basset and Daphne Bridgerton in Bridgerton. Pic: Netflix
Rhimes’ vast contribution to television has been recognised at this year’s Edinburgh TV festival, where she was given its inaugural fellowship award for the global impact of her shows.
Her first huge hit was Grey’s Anatomy. The medical drama, which began in 2005, is now in its 22nd season.
Image: Shonda Rhimes created Grey’s Anatomy. Pic: ABC/Kobal/Shutterstock
But finding an abandoned novel in a hotel room would motivate her to write Bridgerton, the drama that has become the biggest show on Netflix.
While its steamier scenes are often what garner most attention, she says after reading the books, she came to see it as a “workplace drama”.
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“These are women in their workplace because, in a world in which they have no power, they have no ability to do anything else; their only value is who they marry and their only worth is focused into that,” she adds.
‘Bizarre’ criticism
Image: Rhimes says she is thinking about moving to the UK
Rhimes agrees there is something inherently condescending about the way critics use terms like “guilty pleasure” to describe her dramas.
“There are certain people for whom the world of women will never be considered as serious or as complex or as interesting as the world of men,” she says.
Rhimes says she finds some of the reaction to her decision to reflect a diverse range of actors in Bridgerton’s cast “bizarre” after critics accused the show’s makers of “pandering to woke culture”.
Image: Bridgerton has been one of Netflix’s most popular shows. Pic: Netflix
She said: “The idea that I am writing the show looking like I look, that it wouldn’t occur to me that there should be more people in the show who look like me, I feel like that’s an obvious point. Why would I write something that doesn’t include me in any way?”
Given the thousands of episodes of drama she’s written over the years, she’s all too aware that it’s likely artificial intelligence is probably being used to scrape her scripts.
“There’s a danger of AI learning from my episodes, maybe it will learn to be better at what it does, but, most importantly, I don’t think that there’s any substitute for that germ of creativity that comes from a human imagination, I really don’t.”
As for what she enjoys watching on TV, her eyes light up when I mention having heard she’s a massive fan of a certain British sci-fi classic.
“Oh my God, I’ve loved Doctor Who forever! Forever!” she says, describing writer Russell T Davies’ work as “amazing”.
She adds: “For a while, people were like ‘what’s wrong with you?’ because they didn’t know the show. I fell in love with the David Tennant years, and I haven’t been able to let it go because of the writing.”
I ask if she’s ever considered a crossover episode.
She laughs: “I don’t know if there’s a Bridgerton meets Doctor Who…, but I would work with Russell at any time.”