Cassie Ventura testifies about violence and 'freak offs' in Sean 'Diddy' Combs trial

When asked if she ever left one of Combs' alleged "freak offs," Cassie Ventura said yes, "in Century City," alluding to the 2016 incident at a Los Angeles hotel in which security video footage showed the rapper assaulting her.

“I chose to leave,” Ventura said. “I got out and Sean followed me into the hallway, and grabbed me, shoved me to the ground, kicked me and dragged me back to the room and took my stuff.”

In a setback for Combs’ legal team, Judge Subramanian had said in April that the video, first broadcast by CNN last year, was admissible as evidence.

After the jury was shown the video, Ventura was asked how many other times Combs had thrown her like that.

“Too many to count," she said.

Cassie Ventura detailed explicit events that she said would happen in the "freak offs" that Sean Combs requested her to participate in.

Sometimes, she said Combs would join in as she had intercourse with the sex worker, and other times he would watch from a corner. He would also set up phones on FaceTime so he could watch from another room, she said.

"It was his fantasy to direct it —  what to say, how to act," she said. "I did that to speed the process along so I could get it done. I wanted it to be over and get to the other room where we could spend time alone."

Ventura said Combs began recording some of the "freak offs" in the first year.

"I didn't want to do it," she said. "I would watch them with Sean afterwards, while we were having intercourse. If i saw them on my devices i would delete them, I felt disgusted."

Cassie Ventura testified that she used "marijuana, ketamine, mushrooms, whatever was the drug of choice at that point" to get through "freak offs."

"I couldn’t imagine myself doing any of that without having some sort of buffer, " Ventura told the court.

Ventura has testified, at length, about her having intercourse with sex workers while her then-boyfriend Combs watched. Even when she became ill, she said Combs told her to keep going.

"I would actually vomit," she said. "When I got sick during a 'freak off,' he would encourage me to get up and continue on with it."

Cassie Ventura said she questioned the legality of soliciting sex workers online when Combs would ask to see the escort to check if they were a cop.

This prompted an objection from defense attorneys. Judge Arun Subramanian told the jury to disregard Ventura's comment concerning legality.

Ventura said she would contact sex workers online at Combs' request and tell them that it was his fantasy to watch her having sex with another man, she said in court.

Sex workers were paid $1,500 to $6,000, she said.

Cassie Ventura said she used several websites to find sex workers across the country — and always under Combs' direction.

Craigslist, the now-defunct Backpage and the escort service Cowboys 4 Angels were among the sites Ventura testified that she used. But any final hire had to have Combs' OK, she said.

"I showed the photos to Sean to see if he was interested. If he wasn't interested I would tell them 'no' and ask for someone else," she said. "Sean had to approve."

Cassie Ventura told the court that she was expected to participate in "freak offs" during her period against her will at Combs' request, resulting in blood getting on furniture.

Ventura also said Combs had an escort urinate on her during an encounter because it was a "turn on" for him. Combs also participated, she said.

"I just felt humiliated, it was disgusting, it was too much," she said. "I choked, I didn’t want to be doing that, I was in a position I couldn’t easily get out of."

Ventura was asked why she didn't say no.

"I was squeamish immediately, but high in the moment," she said. "That’s about it, you don't have a lot of control at that moment."

Baby oil was used in "freak offs" at Sean Combs' request, according to Cassie Ventura, who said everyone involved, including her, would pour it all over their bodies.

"Sean wanted it heated and he wanted it to be glistening so we applied every five minutes," Ventura said.

Ventura said there was "a pool filled with baby oil" during a "freak off" at the Montage Beverly Hills, which she got into at Combs' request.

"If Sean wanted it to happen, that was what was going to happen, there was no way around it," she said. "We used 10 bottles of baby oil, regular size."

Ventura also mentioned other items used in "freak offs," including Astroglide lubricant and condoms. Staff would bring the items, but if the "freak off" was last minute, Ventura would bring them, she said.

Cassie said she was always conscious of appeasing Combs and did everything possible to stay in his good graces.

"I didn't want him to be upset or not trust me," she testified. "He was a scary person, he would be violent."

She said they engaged "in freak offs in all the homes" and hotels, listing several places in Southern California and across the country.

Cassie Ventura got emotional in court this afternoon when she was asked what she enjoyed about being with Sean Combs.

Ventura, who is eight months pregnant, was crying and grabbed a tissue as she answered the question.

"When we had one-on-one time," she said. "When you care about somebody and love them, you don't want to disappoint them."

Ventura began to cry again when shown an email she wrote to Combs, in which said, "I really need 2 f--."

"So who you wanna f--, gonna call someone?" Combs wrote back.

"I want to f-- you are you crazy," Ventura responded.

When asked why she wrote that, she said, "Because that's how I felt."

Drug-fueled orgies were a regular element of Cassie Ventura's time with Combs, even though she hated virtually every moment of it, the former partner testified.

"I felt pretty horrible about myself. I felt disgusting. I felt humiliated," she said. "I didn’t have the words to show how horrible I felt. I couldn’t talk to anyone about it."

The witness recalled drinking alcohol and taking ecstasy when first having intercourse with a sex worker for Combs' entertainment.

"I was high so I didn't feel much," she said. "Did this really happen to me? I didn’t know what was going to happen after that, if we were going to do it more frequently, I said yes to more, I didn't want to make him upset or angry."

Sean "Diddy" Combs had a voyeurism fantasy, according to Cassie Ventura, mentioning it to her in the first six months of their relationship.

"He described it as a fantasy he had where he would want to see me having sexual interactions with another male so he could watch," Ventura said in court, adding that she agreed because she didn't want to upset him.

Ventura said she was 22 when Combs first proposed "freak offs."

"I loved him, I didn't want him to think I thought anything bad of him," Ventura said of the experience.

Combs and Cassie Ventura were engaged in one of their "freak off" sessions when the rapper was told that long-time rival Suge Knight was at a nearby diner, prompting him to get dressed for confrontation, she said.

"We were having a freak off in one of his homes in L.A. and he said Suge was at Mel’s Diner and we packed up and drove down there," Ventura testified.

"I was screaming and crying, 'Please don't do anything stupid.' I didn't know what they were going to do."

Knight is now serving a lengthy prison term after pleading guilt to voluntary manslaughter.

Sean "Diddy" Combs had guns in safes in his multiple homes, according to his ex-girlfriend, Cassie Ventura.

Ventura, who sometimes had access to these safes, said Combs had guns in New York, Los Angeles, Miami and New Jersey. She said she saw the guns outside of the safes "a few times." The safes also contained cash, jewelry and video tapes, she said.

When she asked if she ever handled any of Combs’ alleged guns, she said she was handed a gun at a club in downtown Los Angeles to put in her bag while she was on mushrooms.

“I was freaking out it was going to go off,” she said, adding that she handed the gun off to someone after she left the club. Ventura said it wasn’t the only instance she came in contact with one of Combs’ alleged guns.

"The guns came out here and there. I always felt it was a little bit of a scare tactic," she said.

The sketch shows Sean “Diddy” Combs watching as his former girlfriend Casandra “Cassie” Ventura is sworn in today.

Cassie Ventura recalled how Combs would lash out at her by taking away her electronics, cars and other possessions as a form of punishment.

"He would take the car away, the house, jewelry," she said. "The physical things didn't matter; I just wanted his approval."

The former romantic partner said Combs would dispatch his staffer for these take backs.

"Staff would take them," she recalled. "If I wasn't there, it would be a staff member or security."

When Cassie Ventura came back to the stand after a lunch break, she said Combs had the final say on her career and her appearance.

While James Cruz managed her, he told her that he was doing it with "one hand tied behind his back," and that everything had to go through Combs, she said.

Ventura also said Combs made comments about her physical appearance, including telling her that she "looked too Mexican," that her hair looked bad, or that her nails "needed to look a certain way."

"My appearance was very important to him, it was pretty immediate," she said in court. "Some days he would want me to be really sexy and other days like a tomboy. He was just very involved in it."

Ventura added that he preferred her nails to be white, and during "freak offs" they had to be white or a French tip. Combs would also make comments about her working out and keeping her shape, and talked to her about breast implants, she said.

"I had to look a certain way during freak offs," Ventura said. "Definitely my self-worth took a hit during the entirety of the relationship."

The defendant’s former partner, Cassie Ventura, returned to the witness stand following the court's lunch break.

Ventura donned a camel-colored overcoat, which she did not have before lunch, on top of her brown dress.

Cassie Ventura walked into court today wearing a long-sleeved brown dress that went down to her ankles. Her pregnant belly was very obvious to onlookers.

She remained soft-spoken and composed through the majority of her testimony, though there were times she needed to take steadying breaths while answering questions. This was most obvious when she was describing what "freak offs" were to the courtroom. She dabbed at her eyes a few times with tissues when answering the question.

Ventura adjusted herself several times during her testimony, mostly keeping her hands clasped in her lap, though there were times she rubbed or pressed down on her stomach.

When Cassie first began discussing freak offs, a member of the public seated in the overflow viewing room yelled out, “That’s disgusting!” She expressed concern that Cassie was made to testify about such things while pregnant and exited the room after being told by a U.S. marshal to conduct herself the same as she would in a courtroom.

A courtroom sketch shows Combs making a heart gesture to family members arriving at his trial today.

U.S. District Judge Arun Subramanian dismissed the jury for a 40-minute lunch break.

All parties should be back in court by 1 p.m. ET as the defendant's former partner, Cassie Ventura, continues her testimony.

Cassie Ventura said that "freak offs" became her job "and there was no space to do anything else."

"Staying out for days on end, taking drugs and drinking, having sex with a stranger," she said in court. "They would be 36, 48, 72 hours, the longest one was four days."

Ventura said that she recorded hundreds of songs despite only releasing one studio album and one mixtape. The "freak offs" took priority over her music career, she said.

"Sean decided I could not release another album," she said.

Cassie lived in multiple homes across Southern California, and Combs made a point of making unannounced visits when she was residing at a place he paid for, she said.

And "depending on his mood," he would frequently pop in without notice "to check in on us without us knowing," according to the witness.

"It was a stomach-in-knots moment, didn’t know what was going to come of the visit," she told the court.

Cassie Ventura described Combs as mercurial, saying his moods "swung different ways quite a bit."

Ventura said his moods affected her "greatly," and that an example of this was abuse he allegedly inflicted on her, even when she wasn't the reason he was in a bad mood.

"Make the wrong face and the next thing I knew I would get hit in the face," she said in court. "He would say, 'Watch your mouth.'"  

Cassie Ventura said that Combs was in a relationship with Kim Porter when they started a physical relationship.

Ventura said in court that after a Miami trip when she and Combs had intercourse for the first time, they began to spend more time together, but their relationship "was not public for many years."

"He just didn't want it to look bad, but also knew it was because of his children and personal things like his family," Ventura said.

When asked who he was with at the time, Ventura said, "Kim Porter."

Cassie recalled having sex for the first time with Combs, an encounter that she said happened while she was high on drugs on a boat in Miami.

"I was drinking wine, then started to take drugs, a blue dolphin ecstasy pill," the witness said. "Sean gave it to me; I had never taken it before. I was just out of it, laughing, didn't know what it was until a little bit later."

Cassie recalled how the drugs gave her a "euphoric" feeling as "you are just really high, sensitive to touch and all of your senses."

Cassie Ventura discussed Combs allegedly kissing her on her 21st birthday in a bathroom at the VMAs.

"I was confused, I was a new artist that didn't know the lay of the land and things like that," she said in court. "I wasn’t used to an executive or anyone being that forward that way with me, in a more than friends way, a sexual way, a romantic way. I remember running out and back to my hotel and telling someone about it."

Ventura said she did not want to kiss Combs on that day. There is a 17-year age gap between her and Combs, she said.

After the incident, Ventura said she went to see him a handful of times at the Trump Hotel in Manhattan, where they discussed her music career and "started to develop a comfortable relationship with each other."

During those meetings, he introduced her to the idea of oral sex, she said, teaching her how to perform it and giving it to her.

When asked if she reciprocated, Cassie said no.

"He made me feel crazy for not reciprocating, at the time I did not understand that kind of relationship and I was in a relationship with someone else," she said. "I was just so young and did not have the vocabulary for some of the things we talked about. I was just trying to understand it, just completely inexperienced at that point."

As a 19-year-old aspiring artist, signing a deal with Combs' Bad Boy Records seemed like a huge, early career break, Cassie said.

"He was a larger-than-life musician, a fan of music, didn’t know too much about him personally," she told jurors.

"When I signed contract, I was 19, it was a 10-album deal, released an album later that year in 2006 in August," she said.

It was the only album she'd release with Bad Boy.

Cassie Ventura said she was 22 when Combs first introduced "freak offs" to her, adding it made her nervous, but that she loved him and "wanted to make him happy."

"At some point I felt I didn't have much of a choice, I didn't know what 'No' could turn into," she said in court.

Ventura said Combs controlled a lot in her life at the time, including her "career, sex, everything."

"I didn’t know if he would be upset enough to be violent or not want to be with me at all," she said, adding that she also feared she would be blackmailed with videos and pictures of her encounters with escorts.

The government witness described herself as a confused 22-year-old when Combs first asked her to have sex with another man as he watched.

"I was 22 at the time, my stomach churned, didn't have a concept of how that would be a turn on but I accepted the responsibility," Cassie testified. "I was confused, nervous, but also loved him very much and wanted to make him happy."

Even if she didn't like these kinds of sexual encounters, Cassie said she just wanted to please Combs.

"It wasn't something that I wanted to be doing especially as regularly as it became," she said. "But again, I was in love and wanted to make him happy. At some point, I felt I didn't have much of a choice."

Minutes into taking the stand this morning, Cassie Ventura was asked to identify a still image of the hallway in which she was beaten by Combs. Video of the incident circulated last year.

"That's me and Sean, InterContinental, Century City," Ventura said in court. "We were having an encounter, we call it a 'freak off.'"

Ventura was asked to describe what a "freak off" was, which she said was a sexual encounter proposed by Combs a year into their relationship, in which she would "perform" for him with a third party, usually an escort.

"And he would direct us in what we were doing," she said.

Ventura said Combs was in charge of hiring escorts for the "freak offs" at first, but eventually it became her job.

Before Cassie Ventura took the stand, Judge Arun Subramanian ruled that her husband, Alex Fine, can be in the courtroom when she takes the stand as a witness, but will have to leave in the event a 2018 rape that she accuses Combs of comes up.

Defense attorneys asked that Fine not be in the courtroom during Ventura's testimony because he could be called as a witness himself, while prosecution said she should have her support system, including her husband, in the courtroom. The judge decided on a compromise.

Ventura told jurors that Combs was often violent toward her during the course of their 10-year relationship.

"Yes, they were violent arguments, usually resulted in physical abuse and dragging, different things," she told jurors. "He would mash my head, knock me over, drag me, kick me."

When asked how often this would happen, she said: "Frequently."

The injuries were frequent and visible, according to the witness.

"Usually I would get knots on my forehead, black eyes, red eyes, bruises all over my body, it just depended," Ventura added.

The government called Combs' former partner, Cassie Ventura, to the witness stand.

She is wearing a brown, snug fitting dress that shows off her pregnancy as she takes the stand, indicating the defense lost their motion to have her seated before the jury returned so they could not see her pregnant stomach.

Prosecutor Emily Johnson is set to question the government's star witness.

After a brief cross and redirect from attorneys, Daniel Philip is finished with his testimony and has left the stand.

There is now a 10 minute break in court.

A male escort's sexual encounters with Cassie Ventura all came at the direction of Combs, the sex worker testified, as prosecutors seek to blunt defense efforts to cast these acts as consensual.

All of Philip's sex with Ventura were paid jobs, Phillip said under re-direct questioning by prosecutors, recalling how he once wasn't compensated because he couldn't maintain an erection.

Under cross examination, Phillip denied he ever saw Ventura outside these paid events or had developed any romantic feelings for her. The defense wants to paint any Phillip-Ventura encounters as consensual and perhaps undermine the government's assertion that Combs was using his business as a criminal enterprise to satisfy sexual desires.

An attorney for Combs pressed Daniel Phillip, a male escort who is alleged to have had multiple sexual encounters with Cassie Ventura, on if he had feelings for her.

Attorney Xavier Donaldson asked Phillip if he thought he was establishing a bond with Ventura, to which he said "correct," but when asked if he thought he was in a relationship with her, he said "incorrect."

Phillip also described a situation in which Ventura was scared and shaking after Combs allegedly hit her. When Combs left the room, Phillip and Ventura spoke, started kissing and were moving in the direction of having intercourse, he said. Phillip said he lost his erection after Combs came back into the room.

Phillip was also asked if he told federal prosecutors last year that he was jealous when Ventura and Combs were having sex, to which he said he does not recall.

Combs' team repeatedly brought up whether Cassie Ventura was drunk or high in her sexual encounters with a male escort, seemingly to contradict prosecutors' allegations Combs forced her to take drugs.

Phillip, the escort who said he was paid to have sex with Ventura as Combs watched, recalled only one instance out of several encounters with Ventura when she did appear to be under the influence.

Daniel Phillip, the male escort who told jurors he witnessed Combs' alleged attacks on girlfriend Cassie Ventura, entered the courtroom to resume his testimony.

Judge Arun Subramanian has yet to rule on what kind of explicit material will be shown in open court or if Ventura, the government's star witness, should be seated on the witness stand before jurors enter the room.

The defense fears that Ventura, who is eight months pregnant, would be an unfairly sympathetic witness if jurors see her in this state.

Defense attorney Anna Estevao brought up an alleged instance in which Cassie Ventura assaulted a security guard and said the defense would address her alleged drug use.

Prosecutor Emily Anne Johnson said the alleged assault is a prior bad act that does not assist her credibility. Estevao argued that prosecutors say violence was part of Ventura and Sean "Diddy" Combs' relationship, but actually that it was related to Combs believing that his longtime-girlfriend was cheating on him.

Estevao also said that prosecutors are attempting to blame Combs for Ventura's drug use, but that the defense will argue she did that of her own free will.

Judge Arun Subramanian overruled prosecutors' objection.

Combs' attorneys asked Judge Arun Subramanian to carefully edit what kind of explicit material is shown in open court, saying much of it amounts to porn.

"There is no aspect to any of the videos the government is looking to put into evidence that is not adult pornography, that is what it is, people who are nude having sex or about to have sex," defense lawyer Marc Agnifilo said. "It’s a privacy issue and it's pornography, what would the press do with it if they had it?"

Robert Balia, an attorney for news organizations covering this trial, said that "our preference is for videos to be shown in open court."

"Testimony is not a substitute for this videos," Balia said. "The people in the press should be able to see justice being done and to see if these people were being coerced."

Sean "Diddy" Combs arrived back in court today wearing a cream-colored shirt with slacks — similar to what he wore in court yesterday. He waved to his family in the courtroom.

Sean Combs' attorneys are opposed to jurors seeing the government's star witness, Cassie Ventura, as pregnant.

The defense would want the eight-months expecting Ventura seated on the stand before jurors enter court.

“Because I think there is a prejudicial quality,” defense attorney Marc Agnifilo told the judge. "Pregnancy is beautiful and wonderful. It also is a source of potential sympathy."

Daniel Phillip, the male escort who testified yesterday, will return to continue cross-examination today.

Judge Arun Subramanian ordered Phillip not to speak to his attorney, even overnight, before he comes back to testify again.

Court will resume at 9:15 a.m. Yesterday ended with the defense cross examining Daniel Phillip, a stripper who testified that he was paid thousands of dollars to have sex with Cassie as Combs watched.