Takeaways From Cassie’s Opening Testimony in Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Trial

Casandra Ventura, the star witness of the federal sex-trafficking and racketeering trial of the music mogul Sean Combs, cried throughout her first day on the stand on Tuesday as she testified about drug-fueled intercourse periods with male prostitutes that would final a number of days and made her really feel “disgusting” and “humiliated.” Mr. Combs has pleaded not responsible.

Ms. Ventura, who is called Cassie, had accused Mr. Combs of rape and years of bodily abuse in a 2023 lawsuit that was shortly settled. Her testimony is important to the prosecution’s case, and she is going to return to the stand on Wednesday.

Listed below are 4 takeaways from her preliminary testimony:

The drug-fueled freak-offs may final for days.

The intercourse periods often known as freak-offs ranged from roughly 36 hours to so long as 4 days, Ms. Ventura testified, generally with none sleep. She recalled ingesting, taking medicine and having intercourse with strangers whereas staying up for “days on finish.”

Medicine helped maintain them awake, she mentioned. However then she would wish to get better from the medicine, dehydration and sleep deprivation.

“The freak-offs turned a job the place there was no area to do the rest however to get better and simply attempt to really feel regular once more,” Ms. Ventura testified.

The freak-offs orchestrated by Mr. Combs “took a giant chunk of my life,” she testified, saying that they continued for years — generally on a virtually weekly foundation. On the finish of the periods, she mentioned, the resort room linens had been usually dirty with child oil residue in addition to bodily fluids together with blood and urine.