This story may contain accounts and descriptions of actual or alleged events that some readers may find disturbing.
After Sean Combs‘ former personal assistant David James left the stand in Combs’ sex trafficking/racketeering trial Tuesday, Regina Ventura, the mother of Combs’ ex-girlfriend, Cassie Ventura, shared her testimony.
Regina testified that when her daughter was flying home for the holidays in December 2011, she sent her mother and Combs’ assistant an email that made her “physically sick.”
“The threats that have been made to me by Sean Puffy Combs are that he is going to release 2 explicit tapes of me,” the email allegedly said, according to Ventura. “He also said he will be having someone hurt me and Scott Mescudi physically,” referring to rapper Kid Cudi, with whom Cassie previously testified she was briefly romantically involved while with Combs.
“I was physically sick. I did not understand a lot of it. The sex tapes threw me,” Regina testified.
She further testified that Combs allegedly demanded $20,000 to “recoup money that he had spent” on Cassie.
Regina Ventura testified that she and her husband took out a home equity loan in order to satisfy Combs’ alleged demand.
She also testified that she used a digital camera to take photos of what she described as bruises on her daughter’s back, arm and leg “to memorialize it.”
She did not undergo cross-examination and was succeeded by male escort Sharay Hayes, who testified he was hired “to create like a sexy scene, sexy erotic scene for them on occasion.”
Hayes testified that he was instructed to go to Trump Tower on Central Park West to perform a striptease for a woman who went by Janet. When he arrived, he testified that Cassie Ventura greeted him in a bathrobe with “nothing on underneath” and explained “that she didn’t want me to actually dance.”
“I was specifically told to not acknowledge her husband. Try not to look at him. No communication between me and him,” Hayes testified. He told the court that he did not recognize the man Ventura referred to as her husband but came to learn in subsequent encounters that it was Combs.
According to Hayes’ testimony, Combs normally kept his distance during the encounters but he told the court about one occasion when Combs allegedly approached and directed him to have sex with Ventura. He said in that instance, he could not perform and told the court that was his last sexual encounter with Combs and Ventura.
Hayes testified that part of his job was to understand how his clients felt during his performances and he believed Ventura was comfortable with the sexual encounters between them.
Federal prosecutors contend that Ventura was coerced into the so-called sexual “freak offs” under the alleged threat of violence or reputational harm from Combs.
The jury was then shown assault-style rifles with defaced serial numbers that were discovered on a shelf inside the main bedroom of Combs’ Miami Beach home, according to a federal agent, as well as various gun parts Combs’ Los Angeles and Miami homes were raided by federal agents in March 2024, according to authorities.
Prosecutor Maureen Comey said expected subsequent witnesses Wednesday will include Dawn Hughes, a psychologist who specializes in sex trauma; George Kaplan, a former Combs assistant; and Mescudi, better known as Kid Cudi, whom Cassie testified Combs threatened because of their brief romantic relationship.
Tune in to Bad Rap: The Case Against Diddy twice weekly for real-time updates on the trial.
If you are affected by abuse and needing support, or know someone who is, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233, or the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673). You can also chat online at thehotline.org or online.rainn.org, respectively.
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