A woman who worked as Combs's personal assistant testified -- under the pseudonym "Mia" -- that he once had her work five days straight with no sleep, threw things at her, including a laptop and an ice bucket, and that he sexually assaulted her. On the stand she said an "irate" Combs once chased her and Cassie Ventura onto a Caribbean beach and that they paddled out into the ocean to get away from him, but the weather turned. "I was trying to weigh if it was scarier to face mother nature or to go back to Puff," she said. "Mia" testified that she never told anyone Combs was allegedly sexually assaulting her. "I was going to die with this," she said. "I didn't want anyone to know ever."If you want to read NBC's coverage of the trial, check out our newsletter, “Diddy On Trial”: NBCNews.com/Diddy
Chapter 1: What is the focus of the Sean Combs trial?
This is On Trial, a special series from Dateline True Crime Weekly, bringing you daily coverage from the Sean Combs racketeering trial. He has pleaded not guilty to all the charges against him. I'm Andrea Canning, and it's Thursday, May 29th. Just a heads up, in this episode, we're going to be talking about some graphic details and harrowing subject matter.
Chapter 2: Who is Mia and why is she testifying?
Today, the prosecution called a woman to the stand they allege is another victim of Combs. We do not know her name. She is testifying under a pseudonym, which is Mia. And at times, she seemed so overwhelmed by what she was telling the jury that she started to hyperventilate. Like Cassie Ventura, Mia alleges that Combs sexually assaulted her.
She also described what it was like working for him, accusing Combs of keeping her awake for literally days at a time and living in fear. Those allegations could put him directly in the crosshairs of the RICO statute. NBC News correspondent Chloe Malas is back outside of the federal courthouse to tell us more. Hey, Chloe. Hey. Hey, Andrea. Okay, so big day in court today.
Before Mia started her testimony, the judge gave a clear instruction to the jury not to put any weight on the fact that she was testifying using a pseudonym. Do we know why exactly she has chosen not to use her name?
We know based on a letter that prosecutors sent the judge in April, Andrea, that she is just so fearful as to her identity getting out there that it could hurt her with her job professionally. It would just cause irreparable damage. We were mandated by the judge not to even describe her appearance. So I can't even tell you what she was wearing.
I can't tell you the color of her hair, what she looked like. I mean, we have to be really, really careful in abiding by these rules.
Chloe, give us a background on Mia. Who is she and how did she get into Sean Combs' world?
So she had briefly worked as a personal assistant for the actor Mike Myers. You might remember him from movies like Austin Powers. And she said that job was like a 10 to 6 job. And that if she ever worked on the weekends for Mike Myers, that she would only be like watching his dog. So then she got this job interview to work for Sean Diddy Combs.
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Chapter 3: What allegations did Mia make against Sean Combs?
And she thought that this was the opportunity of a lifetime. And she was told that she would only be working about 40 hours a week. And she said that very quickly, even on her first day, she realized that this was not the case. She actually said, Andrea, that on her first day, she didn't get to go home until 1 p.m. the next day.
So right off the bat, she said that things were toxic and that there would be high highs and incredibly low lows.
She worked for him from 2009 to 2017, and she was promoted along the way.
Yeah, so she was a personal assistant for most of that time, but her dream was film and television. And ultimately, he made her an executive at his company, and she was able to help him with film and TV projects.
Chapter 4: What were Mia's working conditions like?
So, Chloe, aside from working these long hours, she has a lot of allegations that she has made against him about what it was like working for him.
Yeah. And as she's talking about all of these things, she's shaking. She's crying. She's looking down. Her voice is trembling. And she says that Diddy threw things at her, threw her against a wall, threw her into a pool, that he threw an ice bucket at her, that he threw a laptop that narrowly missed her head one time.
Let's just bring all these things you just talked about into the actual charges in this case. So Danny Savalos, our legal expert, explained yesterday to get a conviction on the racketeering charge, the prosecution has to show that some of the illegal acts that allegedly Combs engaged in are on a list of RICO crimes. One of the crimes on the list is slavery or forced labor. Those are the terms.
Is the prosecution saying that there was some form of that? with how he was treating his employees.
Absolutely. She testified about one time staying up for five days straight in Las Vegas and that her body started to have a physical breakdown, that she had temporary hearing and vision loss, and that finally Diddy was like, okay, now you can go to bed. She also said that she has ADHD, so she had a prescription for Adderall and that she took that, and that's what also helped her stay awake. Hmm.
Mia on the stand said that Combs made her move into his house so she could be near him at all times, and she needed permission to leave.
She wasn't allowed to lock her door because Combs said that this is my house, but that other employees of his could, and that she wasn't allowed to leave, not even so much as to run errands for herself or to see any of her friends, that she was always on the clock, and that one time she left his house, she snuck out around 2 a.m. after he had fallen asleep.
Because she was desperate to see some friends and that he sent security to go find her. So, yeah, she felt like she couldn't leave. I mean, she talked about things that were so extreme, like she couldn't even change her tampon because he wouldn't let her out of his sight. These are just insane stories to hear, if true.
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Chapter 5: How did Sean Combs control Mia's movements?
Very hard to hear. And again, this is Mia's testimony. This is her account under oath. What did Mia say she was doing for all those hours? Like what were her, what was her job description? I'm sure, you know, when you were, I worked for a celebrity. When you work for a celebrity, there's many hats that you wear.
I mean, look, I worked for someone pretty tough in my 20s as well, and I worked crazy hours, and I worked on the weekends, and I remember crying a lot. I would get screamed at. And sometimes in certain industries, you feel like that's a rite of passage. But what Mia is describing just... moves the goalpost even further.
I mean, she says that at one time she would be doing metaphorically 17,000 things, everything from doing his taxes, reading movie scripts, anticipating his moods, checking the weather if it's going to be raining, making sure to grab an umbrella, making sure that she was there at his house before he woke up and staying with him until he went to bed, which we know could be like 4 a.m.,
And she even had to like crack his knuckles. I mean, the whole thing is just it's just a wild litany of things that she claimed she had to do.
You can't pay me enough to crack someone's knuckles. Wow. Same here. So unpredictable hours, nonstop responsibilities. But could the defense argue that this is just a high stress job for a high profile person?
Not a crime. She said that she was constantly humiliated, that he would question her intelligence, he would threaten her job, that she would be suspended without pay for the most random of things that would upset him.
And she also said that it wasn't just her as the personal assistant, that there were other PAs that worked for him, but she felt like she would get the brunt of everything and that if somebody messed up, that ultimately somehow it would be her fault.
We should say that like other employees of Combs that we've heard testify already, there were parts of the job that Mia said she loved.
She said that she begged him for years to stop being a personal assistant and to pursue her true passion, which was film. And that ultimately he allowed her to do that, helping procure films that he could star in or films that they could invest in. She said, even though I had this insane assistant situation, the joy that she would get out of doing TV and film was overwhelmingly awesome.
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Chapter 6: What responsibilities did Mia have in her role?
that he showed up and ended up chasing Cassie down and started to physically beat her until Prince's security intervened. And that after that, Diddy actually suspended Mia's pay.
Hmm. When we come back, we'll have more of her testimony, including what she says happened the day she and Cassie tried to escape Combs on a paddleboard, plus Mia's own story of being sexually assaulted by Sean Combs after the break. So Mia described a number of times when she says Combs got violent with Cassie.
Yeah, so she said that she saw Diddy beat Cassie up multiple times.
Mia gave a description of the sounds that she heard, thuds, things hitting walls that she believes happened. is violence between Combs and Cassie.
It's similar to what we heard from Don Richard, who was in the girl group Danity Kane, who testified about being around Cassie and Diddy and also hearing things happen in different rooms. We also previously heard from a male escort who said that he saw Combs once drag Cassie by her hair into another room and he heard slapping sounds.
Tell us about this story that Mia told on the stand about... trying to get away from Combs while she was with Cassie and they were all on vacation.
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Chapter 7: How did Mia describe her experience working for Combs?
She said that they were in Turks and Caicos and that Cassie came into her room and was terrified and started putting furniture against the door and just kept saying, he's going to kill me.
And they were, I believe, on the first floor and they had doors that exited to the beach and they ran out on the beach and Combs was chasing them and they were running towards the ocean and then they got on some paddle boards and they started just paddling out as far as they could into the ocean to try to get away from him.
And as they turned around, you know, he got smaller and smaller as they were getting further away. And then they actually started to see bad weather coming in and storm clouds. And they were worried, like, do we stay out here and risk our lives in the ocean? Or do we go back to shore and risk our lives there? And ultimately, they decided to go back to shore.
Mia, despite all of this, said she never saw Cassie fight back against Combs.
Chapter 8: What challenges did Mia face while working for Combs?
That's what she says, but that is the exact opposite of what we heard in opening statement from Sean Combs' criminal defense attorney, Tenny Garagos, who has maintained that there was violence on both sides of the relationship.
Mia described cleaning up after freak-offs, and she had a more civilized name for them. She called them hotel nights.
Yes, and she's not the first person who has testified about having to clean up these hotel rooms. She actually described it as a nightmare. Candle wax that you just couldn't get out of the carpet. There would be broken glass, even blood that Diddy supposedly told her was period blood. Oil on the walls, wet towels, water on the floor.
I mean, you can just imagine the sort of damage that was done to the room.
Yeah. Yet Mia says she never reported Combs to the police and she kept working for him, kept getting a paycheck.
I mean, she said that she felt a loyalty to him, that part of the deal was to protect his reputation. I mean, it's similar in testimony to what we've heard from Cassie as to why didn't she ever fully sever ties during this decade-long on-and-off relationship. Yeah.
All right, so this part gets very, very serious. This afternoon, Mia on the stand says Combs sexually assaulted her. She understandably got very upset talking about this in court.
Yeah, so she was crying, and she said that after... Diddy's 40th birthday. She was in his apartment and he had everybody leave. I believe they were in the kitchen. And that's when he had her take a couple of shots of vodka and she hadn't eaten or had anything to drink that day. And so she said it hit her really hard.
And then she said that all of a sudden he had kind of pushed her up against a wall and he put his hand up her dress. And then she talked about another instance at his home in L.A. It was around 2009, 2010. So she doesn't exactly remember when it allegedly happened, but she was sleeping in a room in his house. She was in a bunk bed. And like I told you before, she wasn't allowed to lock up.
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