By Edem Latsu Nukafu
According to the lawsuit, the “Me and You” vocalist alleges that Mr. Combs, who is often identified as Puff Daddy or Diddy, subjected her to a pattern of control and abuse for approximately ten years. Mr. Combs categorically denied the accusations.
Sean Combs, the record producer and music magnate who has been one of the most prominent names in hip-hop for decades, was dragged to federal court on Thursday by Cassie, an R&B crooner once signed to his label, who accused Mr. Combs of rape, and of repeated physical abuse over about a decade.
In the suit, filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan, Cassie, government name is Casandra Ventura — and who had long been Mr. Combs’s lover — says that not long after she met him in 2005, when she was 19, he initiated a pattern of control and abuse that involved pinning her with drugs, beating her, and forcing her to have sex with a succession of male prostitutes while recording the encounters.
According to the lawsuit, Mr. Combs forced his way into her home and assaulted her near the end of their relationship in 2018.
“After years in silence and darkness,” Ms. Ventura said in a statement, “I am finally ready to tell my story, and to speak up on behalf of myself and for the benefit of other women who face violence and abuse in their relationships.”
According to Mr. Combs’ lawyer, Ben Brafman, in response.: “Mr. Combs vehemently denies these offensive and outrageous allegations. For the past six months, Mr. Combs has been subjected to Ms. Ventura’s persistent demand of $30 million, under the threat of writing a damaging book about their relationship, which was unequivocally rejected as blatant blackmail. Despite withdrawing her initial threat, Ms. Ventura has now resorted to filing a lawsuit riddled with baseless and outrageous lies, aiming to tarnish Mr. Combs’s reputation and seeking a payday.”
Ms. Ventura’s lawyer, Douglas Wigdor, stated that the parties had communicated before the lawsuit was filed. “Mr. Combs offered Ms. Ventura eight figures to silence her and prevent the filing of this lawsuit,” he mentioned. “She rejected his efforts.”
Cassie’s lawsuit is the current in a series of sexual assault civil suits filed recently against famous men in the music space, including Steven Tyler of Aerosmith, the executive L.A. Reid and Neil Portnow, the former head of the organization behind the Grammy Awards. (Mr. Portnow has debunked the accusation; Mr. Tyler and Mr. Reid have not responded.)
The Bad Boy Entertainment bankroller, 54, who established the record label in 1993 and became one of the early figures in the commercialization of hip-hop, working with talents such as late the Notorious B.I.G. and Mary J. Blige. His net worth has been estimated as high as $1 billion, and last year Forbes calculated Mr. Combs’s annual earnings at $90 million, attributing that amount largely to his former partnership in a liquor brand, Ciroc, that is owned by the spirits giant Diageo.
Mr. Combs, who has been known by different names during his career, including Puff Daddy, Diddy, and Love, could be the most well-known music executive of his generation. The suit describes Diddy as a violent person who, in addition to repeatedly assaulting Ms. Ventura, required her to carry his gun in her purse, and it suggests that he had a role in blowing up a rival suitor’s car. The suit further alleges that Mr. Combs dangled a friend of Ms. Ventura over a balcony on the 17th floor of the hotel in one instance.
The court papers state that those who worked with Mr. Combs assisted him in controlling Ms. Ventura by threatening her with retribution, such as suppression of her music if she did not obey his orders, or concealing his behavior. Unspecified damages are sought in the lawsuit that names Mr. Combs and several of his affiliated companies as defendants.
Ms. Ventura’s lawsuit states that she was caught up in Mr. Combs’s jet-setting lifestyle not long after meeting him and signing with Bad Boy, which released her debut album in 2006.
According to the lawsuit, he soon started exerting an exceptional amount of control over her life. Not only did he control her career, but he also paid for her car, apartments, clothing, and even had access to her personal medical records. The suit also states the results from an M.R.I. scan she had — for memory loss, possibly caused by drug use or by a beating she mentioned she suffered from Mr. Combs — went straight to Mr. Combs.
Further, Diddy also gave Ms. Ventura with “copious amounts of drugs,” including ecstasy and ketamine, and forced her to imbibe them, the suit says, and often became violent, physically assaulting her “multiple times each year.” The suit mentions Ms. Ventura never reported to the police because she was scared it “would merely give Mr. Combs another excuse to hurt her.”
Meanwhile, in one instant in Los Angeles in 2009, the suit says, Mr. Combs became peeved when he saw Ms. Ventura having a conversation with another talent agent, then pushed her into a car and kicked her repeatedly in the face, making her bleed. Mr. Combs’ staff transported her to a hotel room to rest for a week, as per the suit. She asked to go home to her parents, but Mr. Combs refused, the suit says.
The suit states that after witnessing the violent consequences of rejecting Mr. Combs and the extent to which he would exclude her from her support network, “Ms. Ventura felt that saying ‘no’ to Mr. Combs would cost her something — her family, her friends, her career, or even her life.” The suit claims that Mr. Combs sent his employees to lure her back, even though she tried to leave.
In one instance described in the court papers, Ms. Ventura claims that in early 2012, Mr. Combs became so angry about her dating the rapper Kid Cudi that he threatened to blow up the rapper’s car. “Around that time,” the suit says, “Kid Cudi’s car exploded in his driveway.”
According to a spokesperson, Kid Cudi confirmed Ms. Ventura’s claim that his car exploded. “This is all true,” he mentioned.
A few years into Ms. Ventura’s relationship with Mr. Combs, the suit says, he started coercing her “to engage in a fantasy of his called ‘voyeurism,’” in which she was directed to have sex with a succession of male prostitutes, while Mr. Combs watched, masturbated, took pictures and shot video.
According to the suit, Mr. Combs called these encounters “freak offs,” which involved costumes, like masquerade masks and lingerie. They proceeded for years, taking place at high-end hotels across the United States and in Mr. Combs’s homes. The suit says that he instructed Ms. Ventura to search the websites of escort services to procure male sex workers.
Drugs were supplied at these occasions, which Ms. Ventura’s suit says she took because they “allowed her to disassociate during these horrific encounters.”
According to the suit, Ms. Ventura would delete videos from these incidents that had been shot on her phone, but Mr. Combs told her he still had access to those videos, and on a flight once made her watch a video she thought she had deleted.
The suit says that as a result of these sexual encounters in different cities, Ms. Ventura was a victim of sex trafficking. The suit also accuses Mr. Combs of sexual battery, sexual assault and violations of New York City’s gender-motivated violence law.
Ms. Ventura’s suit includes several accounts of her unsuccessful attempts to escape Mr. Combs’s control.
In one example, the suit says that during a “freak off” at a Los Angeles hotel in 2016, an intoxicated Mr. Combs punched Ms. Ventura in the face, giving her a black eye. He fell asleep and she tried to leave the room, but Mr. Combs woke up and followed her into the hallway, where he threw glass vases at her, sending glass shattering throughout the corridor, according to the court filing. The hotel’s security cameras captured that incident, but the suit says Mr. Combs paid the hotel $50,000 for the footage.
The court filing says that in 2018, after Mr. Combs and Ms. Ventura met for dinner, he forced himself into her apartment and raped her while she “repeatedly said ‘no’ and tried to push him away.” After that, the suit says, she left him for good. Ms. Ventura married Alex Fine, a personal trainer, the following year and now has two young children. According to the complaint, her association with Bad Boy ended in 2019.
Ms. Ventura’s case, like other recent sexual assault lawsuits, is being brought under the Adult Survivors Act, a New York law that allows people who say they were victims of sexual abuse to file civil suits after the statute of limitations has expired. The one-year window to bring cases under this law ends next week.
That law is cited in Ms. Ventura’s complaint, and in a communique she addressed its essence.
“With the expiration of New York’s Adult Survivors Act fast approaching,” she uttered, “it became clear that this was an opportunity to speak up about the trauma I have experienced and that I will be recovering from for the rest of my life.”
Writer’s email: edemlatsu093@gmail.com
