Erin Koturski
Appearances
Bad Rap: The Case Against Diddy
The Trial: Cassie Ventura's Second Day of Testimony
Cassie Ventura Eva broke down on the witness stand as she described how her abusive, nearly 11-year relationship with Sean Combs left her drug-addicted and psychologically damaged. She was made to participate, she said, in hundreds of freak-offs, these sexual performances with male prostitutes, while Sean Combs recorded them using the video, she said, as leverage.
Bad Rap: The Case Against Diddy
The Trial: Cassie Ventura's Second Day of Testimony
And by the end of their relationship, she said she was suicidal, She was in trauma therapy. She was having episodes of PTSD. And she remembered for the jury just wanting Sean Combs to understand. She wrote down what she thought would be chapters of a book. She wanted him to read them to understand the pain he had caused.
Bad Rap: The Case Against Diddy
The Trial: Cassie Ventura's Second Day of Testimony
Eventually, she sued him and revealed today for the first time that they settled the lawsuit for $20 million.
Bad Rap: The Case Against Diddy
The Trial: Cassie Ventura's Second Day of Testimony
The jurors were quite moved. She recalled an instance toward the end of their relationship in 2018 when she alleged that Sean Combs raped her in her own apartment on the floor. She said it was quick and he lost the color in his eyes. His eyes went black. And she told him, no, She told him she didn't want to. She said she didn't even know if he heard her.
Bad Rap: The Case Against Diddy
The Trial: Cassie Ventura's Second Day of Testimony
He just kept going until he finished and then simply left. It was the second to last time that she had seen him in the course of their nearly 11-year relationship. But the jury's most vivid reaction, Eva, came when they were shown explicit images from some of the videos that Cassie said she was made to record of the freak-offs. There were seven images.
Bad Rap: The Case Against Diddy
The Trial: Cassie Ventura's Second Day of Testimony
One juror appeared to move his neck as if taken aback. Another juror raised an eyebrow. Another appeared to shake a head. Sean Combs wanted to see those images. He grabbed a binder that they were contained in, leaned over towards his attorney to flip through them.
Bad Rap: The Case Against Diddy
The Trial: Cassie Ventura's Second Day of Testimony
Alex Fine, Cassie Ventura's husband, at one point just looked over at Sean Combs, seemed to glare at him when some of these explicit details come out. Other times, he doesn't even seem to acknowledge him in the courtroom, just looks straight at his wife as if to make sure she is OK. And notably today, Eva, after such graphic testimony from Cassie Ventura about decades' worth of sexual activity.
Bad Rap: The Case Against Diddy
The Trial: Cassie Ventura's Second Day of Testimony
Sean Combs' daughters were not here. There were fewer members of the Combs family here to support him. He interacted with them, mouths, I love you, makes the same gestures he's made for the last couple of days. But some of this testimony clearly has been too much, especially for Combs' daughters.
Bad Rap: The Case Against Diddy
The Trial: Cassie Ventura's Second Day of Testimony
This is an establishment of one of the acts of the racketeering conspiracy that prosecutors have alleged. It was 2011, and Cassie Ventura said she and Sean Combs were not in a good place, so she briefly began dating Kid Cudi and said that at one point Sean Combs found out
Bad Rap: The Case Against Diddy
The Trial: Cassie Ventura's Second Day of Testimony
after they had a freak-off because he saw her phone, saw some emails that she had written about Kid Cudi, and he became enraged about it and threatened at one point to blow up his car. And Cassie Ventura recalled Combs telling her that he wanted Kid Cudi's friends to be there to watch the car blow up. And one of the racketeering conspiracy acts that Sean Combs is accused of is arson.