Cassie Ventura has spoken out ahead of Diddy’s sentencing, filing a powerful victim impact statement that lays bare years of abuse and her continuing fear for her safety.
The R&B singer revealed she moved her family out of New York because she is afraid of retaliation if Diddy is released.
“I am so scared that if he walks free, his first actions will be swift retribution towards me and others who spoke up,” she wrote.
Ventura was the government’s central witness at trial, testifying for four days about the decade-long relationship that she says left her physically, emotionally, and psychologically scarred.
In her letter to the court, she expanded on her testimony for the first time since the trial.
“For four days in May, while nine months pregnant with my son, I testified in front of a packed courtroom about the most traumatic and horrifying chapter in my life,” she explained.
She detailed how the abuse began when she was a teenager.
“I testified that from age nineteen, Sean Combs used violence, threats, substances, and control over my career to trap me in over a decade of abuse. He groomed me into performing repeated sex acts with hired male sex workers during multi-day ‘freak-offs,’ which occurred nearly weekly. I was forced into lingerie and heels, told exactly how to look, and plied with drugs and alcohol so he could control me like a puppet. These events were degrading and disgusting, leaving me with infections, illnesses, and days of physical and emotional exhaustion before he demanded it all again. Sex acts became my full-time job, used as the only way to stay in his good graces.”
Ventura also reminded the court of physical assaults, citing the now widely shared video of Diddy attacking her.
“Over the nearly eleven years we were together, Sean Combs would hit me, punch me, stomp on my face, pull my hair, and throw my body to the ground and against the wall,” she wrote. “The entire courtroom watched actual footage of Combs kicking and beating me as I tried to run away from a freak-off in 2016. People watched this footage dozens of times, seeing my body thrown to the ground, my hands over my head, curled into a fetal position to shield me from the worst blows.”
In her statement, Ventura rejected the defense’s portrayal of their relationship.
“While the defense attorneys at trial suggested that my time with Combs was akin to a ‘great modern love story,’ nothing could be further from the truth. Nothing about this story is great, modern, or loving—this was a horrific decade of my life stained by abuse, violence, forced sex, and degradation.”
Prosecutors have asked for an 11-year sentence, calling Diddy “unrepentant” and noting that similar crimes have drawn punishments of over a decade.
However, the defense is seeking a far lighter outcome of 14 months, which, with time already served, could allow an immediate release. His lawyers admitted that Diddy abused Ventura and other women but denied coercion into sexual acts. They have pointed to what they describe as his efforts to change while incarcerated, including teaching a class called “Free Game with Diddy.”
Ventura, however, told the court she does not believe he has changed.
“As much progress as I have made in recovering from his abuse, I remain very much afraid of what he is capable of and the malice he undoubtedly harbors towards me for having the bravery to tell the truth,” she said. “He is not being truthful. I know that who he was to me—the manipulator, the aggressor, the abuser, the trafficker—is who he is as a human. He has no interest in changing or becoming better. He will always be the same cruel, power-hungry, manipulative man that he is.”
Diddy will learn his fate on Friday, October 3.
