All eyes on Cassie as the prosecution's star witness testifies in Diddy's trial

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Casandra Ventura, the R&B singer and model whose explosive civil lawsuit set the stage for this federal trial, took the stand today. Ventura, visibly pregnant and soft-spoken, testified in wrenching and graphic terms about the alleged abuse during her 10-year on-and-off relationship with Diddy, who has pleaded not guilty to sex trafficking and racketeering charges. 

Ventura, who is expected to testify for days, told jurors about “violent arguments” that escalated into ferocious attacks. “He would mash my head, knock me over, drag me, kick me,” Ventura told the panel of eight men and four women. She characterized Diddy as a mercurial and sometimes “scary” figure who “controlled a lot of my life.”

She described Diddy’s constant demand for drug-fueled marathon sexual encounters known as “freak offs.” She said that her “stomach churned” the first time he asked her to have sex with another man while he watched. In the years after, “the freak offs became a job, and there was no space to do anything else. … They would be 36, 48, 72 hours. The longest one was four days.”

The “freak offs” left her feeling “disgusting” and “humiliated,” she said, fighting back tears. She said she took drugs like ecstasy to create a “buffer” so she could “disassociate.” Diddy seemed to become another person altogether during the highly choreographed sex sessions. “His eyes would go black,” she said. “The version I knew of him was no longer there.”