Megan Agnew, senior features writer at the Times and the Sunday Times, is based in New York.<\/p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=”credit-name” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” text_font=”Black Han Sans|||on|||||” text_text_color=”#000000″ header_4_font=”|||on|||||” header_4_text_align=”center” text_orientation=”center” custom_margin=”||0px||false|false” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″]
Words by Megan Agnew<\/strong><\/p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_image src=”https:\/\/flatplan-plus-content.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2025\/06\/GettyImages-958654702.jpg” alt=”Diddy” title_text=”2018 Fox Network Upfront” force_fullwidth=”on” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″][\/et_pb_image][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″] Cassandra \u201cCassie\u201d Ventura fidgeted in the witness box before each day of questioning, nervously rearranging the bottles of water on the stand in front of her, fiddling with her hair, rubbing her stomach, looking down at her eight-and-a-half month pregnant body.<\/p>\n Just meters away from the 38-year-old popstar was her former partner of 11 years, hip-hop mogul Sean Combs, 55, looking towards her, leaning far back in his chair, hands arched in front of him, the benches in court behind him packed-out with his various children, relatives and his beloved mother.<\/p>\n Combs \u2013 or P-Diddy or Puff Daddy or Brother Love \u2013 was arrested in September 2024 and charged with racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking and transportation to engage in prostitution, to which he pleaded not guilty. The trial, which started in a Manhattan federal courtroom on May 5, will last around eight weeks. He faces life in prison.<\/p>\n The prosecution is in the process of calling up dozens of witnesses \u2013 former friends and employees, law enforcement officers and sex workers \u2013 in an attempt to prove that Combs\u2019 business empire (at one point worth over $1 billion) was in fact a \u201ccriminal enterprise\u201d which he used to facilitate abuse and commercial sex. Combs\u2019 defense team argued that he was an abuser, but that \u201cdomestic violence is not sex trafficking\u201d.<\/p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_image src=”https:\/\/flatplan-plus-content.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2025\/06\/GettyImages-911123888-1.jpg” alt=”Diddy” title_text=”2018 Roc Nation THE BRUNCH” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″][\/et_pb_image][et_pb_code _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][\/et_pb_code][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″] Ventura was one of the prosecution\u2019s primary witnesses and, in an extraordinary act of bravery, the only one of four alleged victims to choose not be anonymised. She took the stand for four days straight, most of which I was there watching in the public gallery for my job at The Sunday Times. It was relentless: An account of years and years of brutality and violence, beatings and rages and entrapment, and of the exhaustion and repetitiveness of domestic abuse, the \u201csame things, over and over\u201d, she told the jury.<\/p>\n “The world has gotten to witness the strength and bravery of my wife, freeing herself of her past,\u201d wrote Ventura\u2019s husband of six years, Alex Fine, 32, as she concluded her testimony. \u201cI did not save Cassie, as some have said. To say that is an insult to the years of painful work my wife has done to save herself. Cassie saved Cassie.\u201d<\/p>\n Wearing suit jackets with sharp, padded shoulders and her hair slicked-back, Ventura’s nerves dropped away as soon as she started talking each morning. She was a compelling mixture of things all at once: Articulate and sharp, but wide open to questioning; filled with horror about what she went through, but resigned to the fact she did; fatigued by the stories, but absolute in her accounts of them. \u201cYep that\u2019s me,\u201d she said when she was shown a photo of herself during a sex party, \u201cjust standing there.\u201d Other times the defense asked her to read out explicit text messages she sent Combs. She did so unflinchingly, giving them no opponent for confrontation. It was disarming.<\/p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=”custom-quote” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” header_2_font=”Libre Bodoni|||on|||||” header_2_text_align=”center” header_2_text_color=”#333333″ header_2_font_size=”40px” header_2_line_height=”1.2em” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″] \u201cI can\u2019t carry this any more,\u201d she told the jurors when asked about why she was testifying in criminal court, having already received a $20 million settlement after she sued Combs in 2023. \u201cI can\u2019t carry the shame, the guilt. The way I was guided to treat people like they were disposable. What\u2019s right is right and what\u2019s wrong is wrong. And I\u2019m here to do the right thing.\u201d<\/p>\n As an artist on Combs\u2019 label, Bad Boy Records, as well as his girlfriend, Ventura claimed she felt like it was her \u201cjob\u201d to participate in \u201cfreak offs\u201d, days-long sex parties fuelled by drugs (MDMA, ecstasy, ketamine and GHB). She argued she never wanted to do them. Combs\u2019 legal team argued she was a willing participant.<\/p>\n How frequently did he use the videos of her at freak offs for blackmail, asked the prosecution. \u201cOnce is too much but several times,\u201d she said. How frequently was he physical in the first year? \u201cFrequently enough.\u201d How many times was he violent with her? \u201cWho knows.\u201d When police questioned her about her injuries, she did not tell them Combs\u2019 name. When friends and family told her she should leave, she was too frightened. She became \u201cheavily dependent\u201d on opiates.<\/p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_image src=”https:\/\/flatplan-plus-content.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2025\/06\/GettyImages-98875412.jpg” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” theme_builder_area=”post_content” hover_enabled=”0″ sticky_enabled=”0″ alt=”Cassie” title_text=”The Candie’s Foundation Event To Prevent”][\/et_pb_image][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” theme_builder_area=”post_content” hover_enabled=”0″ sticky_enabled=”0″] My notebook soon became full of pages and pages of alleged atrocities. There were photos of her eyebrow split open and swollen to the size of a tennis ball when she said Combs slammed her into a bed frame; an account of her hiding under the seat of a Cadillac Escalade as he stomped on her face; a photo of her at a music festival, hair styled over her beaten eye. \u201cI always had arnica gel for bruising with me,\u201d she said. Combs, wearing light-coloured jumpers among a sea of black suits, sat still and listening, until his legal team started the cross-examination, when he became restless, passing notes to his lawyer and drumming his fingers on the chair-arm. During a recess, he stood with his fists wide on the table. This was the physically dominating, controlling man so many of his employees, acquaintances and contemporaries had told me about when I was writing a profile on Combs for the Sunday Times Magazine. Also there was a primped and preened Combs family, his mother\u2019s sunglasses never coming off; his twin 18-year-old daughters in matching outfits; his 18-year-old son, Chance; and his 27-year-old son Christian \u201cKing\u201d Combs. Each day they arrived, walking arm-in-arm out of an enormous, blacked-out Sprinter van, followed by their own film crew.<\/p>\n In the days after watching Ventura in the witness stand, I thought of her testimony often, the darkness and pain and bravery; of the dozens of civil cases I read filed against Combs in the years after hers, in which alleged victims credit her for being the first to come forward; and of her during the quiet, still moments in the courtroom, siting there alone, her hand on the curve of her unborn child, taking long, deep breaths and looking up towards the sky.<\/p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_divider color=”#111111″ divider_position=”center” divider_weight=”2px” module_class=”custom-divider” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” custom_margin=”0px||0px||false|false” custom_padding=”0px||0px||false|false” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][\/et_pb_divider][et_pb_text module_class=”credit-texts” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” text_font=”|||on|||||” text_orientation=”center” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”] Photo: <\/b>Getty<\/p>[\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section]\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The trial is expected to last eight weeks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":10397,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10394","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-feature","category-news"],"acf":[],"modified_by":"guestgrazia","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10394","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10394"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10394\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10402,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10394\/revisions\/10402"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10397"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}‘I can’t carry this anymore.’<\/span><\/h2>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″]
But it was Ventura\u2019s account of an alleged rape in 2018 that was the most affecting. \u201cIt was like somebody taking something from you,\u201d she said, struggling to speak through tears, her voice heavy with hurt, barely able to say the word “rape” itself. It was a shattering conclusion.<\/p>\n
Alongside the reporters, most of the courtroom was filled with true crime obsessives, YouTubers, Combs fans air-punching at big moments, and conspiracy theorists making wild claims about the CIA and Jeffrey Epstein.<\/p>\n