By Hayden Cunningham – The Postmillennial
Sean “Diddy” Combs’ ex-girlfriend Cassie Ventura took the stand this week to testify in the rapper’s trial, after jurors were shown the unedited hotel surveillance footage of Combs attacking her in 2016. The video was made public Wednesday after being entered as evidence.
The video shows Combs grabbing Ventura by the head, slamming her to the floor, dragging her out of an elevator, and kicking her.
The footage from a Los Angeles hotel was played for the jury as Israel Florez, the hotel’s assistant security director at the time, described what happened.
“I don’t want to lose anything and I can lose it all,” security director Israel Florez described Diddy as saying.
Florez also submitted an email showing his report of the 2016 incident, which included photos of the hotel room. He testified that Combs attempted to bribe him, allegedly saying, “You take care of this, I got you, let’s go to my room.”
“[I] said all I ask is for respect for the guest and myself, so do me the favor and lets return you to your room,” Florez wrote. He further claimed that Combs saw Ventura coming down the hall and “raised his voice” toward her. He then told Combs he would be escorted out for his behavior, which prompted Combs to pull out about $100 in cash and say “You take care of this and I take care of you.”
Florez said he “declined the money and told Mr. Combs that all we needed was for him to stay in his room until check out, which is today.”
Ventura previously claimed in a now-settled lawsuit that Combs paid the hotel $50,000 to obtain the footage of the attack, a report by the Daily Mail noted.
Ventura came face-to-face with Combs on the second day of the trial. She testified that she took part in “Freak Offs” out of fear that Combs would blackmail her if she refused. Ventura said Combs forced her to have sex with male escorts while he watched, claiming it became her “job” and that she feared blackmail.
“He would bash me on my head, knock me over, drag me, kick me, stomp me in the head if I was down,” Ventura explained, noting this happened frequently.
“Within the first year of our relationship, Sean proposed to me this idea, this sexual encounter that he called voyeurism, where he’d watch me in sexual activity with a third party, specifically another man,” she told the court.
“Pretty quickly, I knew that it wasn’t something I wanted to be doing. Especially as regularly as it became, but I was in love and wanted to make him happy. It got to a point I didn’t feel I had much of a choice.”
Ventura told the court that she feared making Combs angry because he “controlled” her life. “Over time, it turned into the fact there were blackmail materials to make me feel if I didn’t do it, it would be hung over my head or these things would become public,” she said.
She described the “Freak Offs” as lasting up to four days and involving drugs, alcohol, and extended sexual activity with strangers.
“Plainly the Freak Offs became a job where there was no space to do anything else but to recover and try to feel normal again. Staying up for days on end, taking drugs and other substances, drinking. Having sex with a stranger for days.” She also said the events ranged anywhere from 36, 48 to 72 hours. The longest one ever was four days. Maybe even more on and off with breaks.