NEW YORK (TCD) — The singer Cassie filed a lawsuit in federal court this week accusing her ex-boyfriend Sean “Diddy” Combs of raping and abusing her over the course of more than a decade.
According to the civil lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court in New York, Cassie, whose real name is Casandra Ventura, filed the civil case against Combs, his record label, Bad Boy Entertainment, Bad Boy Records, Epic Records, Combs Enterprises, and Doe Corporation in federal court in Manhattan. Doe Corporation refers to Combs’ related business entities.
The complaint included a trigger warning, saying, “This document contains highly graphic information of a sexual nature, including sexual assault.”
The New York Times reports Ventura wrote in a statement, “After years in silence and darkness, 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.”
Combs’ attorney, Ben Brafman, said Combs “vehemently denies these offensive and outrageous allegations.”
Brafman’s statement said, “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.”
Ventura’s attorney, Douglas Wigdor, told The New York Times the two legal teams spoke prior to the lawsuit.
Wigdor said, “Mr. Combs offered Ms. Ventura eight figures to silence her and prevent the filing of this lawsuit. She rejected his efforts.”
The lawsuit accuses Combs of sex trafficking, battery/sexual battery, sexual assault, gender-motivated violence, and sexual harassment, gender discrimination, and hostile work environment.
Ventura and Combs met around 2005 when he signed her to his music label. She was 19 years old at the time and he was 37. According to the lawsuit, Combs initially “positioned himself as a father figure and protector of Ms. Ventura.” She also alleges he “exerted his power and influence over Ms. Ventura.”
The suit alleges Combs “trapped” Ventura in a “cycle of abuse, violence, and sex trafficking,” including allegedly raping her in her home, stomping on her, forcing her to have sex with male prostitutes, and making her carry his gun in her purse. Ventura claimed in her suit the abuse continued over the course of a decade.
The court document says Combs “was prone to uncontrollable rage” during their relationship and “frequently beat Ms. Ventura savagely.” Ventura claims Combs would give her lavish gifts and “exert control and influence” over her.
The suit alleges, “All aspects of Ms. Ventura’s life were controlled by either Mr. Combs or his management companies.”
The civil complaint alleges, “Over the years that Mr. Combs abused Ms. Ventura physically and sexually, she again and again tried to escape his tight hold over her life. Every time she hid, Mr. Combs’s vast networks of corporations and affiliated entities found her, and those who worked for Mr. Combs’s companies implored her to return to him. Many went as far as to explicitly state that her failure to return to Mr. Combs would hinder her success in the music industry.”
According to the documents, Combs allegedly made Ventura have sex with male prostitutes in what he called “freak offs” while he watched. He allegedly “always supplied Ms. Ventura (and the sex worker) with copious amounts of drugs,” such as cocaine, ketamine, marijuana, ecstasy, GHB, and alcohol. The lawsuit alleges Combs recorded some of these interactions on his phone. On some occasions, he allegedly got intoxicated and hit her in front of the sex worker.
Ventura reportedly suffered anxiety prior to the “freak offs,” which resulted in her become physically ill.
BREAKING: Diddy is being sued by the singer Cassie, his longtime partner and former Bad Boy artist, for years of alleged horrific physical and sexual abuse
by @sisario https://t.co/rpMxv5Iw91
some truly heinous stuff in this lawsuit pic.twitter.com/ivWWTVWaOc
— Joe Coscarelli (@joecoscarelli) November 16, 2023
@joecoscarelli
In 2009, he allegedly stomped on her and kicked her in the face after he saw her speaking to a music manager in a club. A similar incident allegedly occurred in 2015.
Ventura dated rapper Kid Cudi, which allegedly upset Combs. According to the lawsuit, “In February 2012, during Paris Fashion Week, Mr. Combs told Ms. Ventura that he was going to blow up Kid Cudi’s car, and that he wanted to ensure that Kid Cudi was home with his friends when it happened. Around that time, Kid Cudi’s car exploded in his driveway.”
Kid Cudi confirmed that he had a car that exploded to The New York Times via a spokesperson, who said, “This is all true.”
In 2016, Combs allegedly beat Ventura and threw glass vases at her at the InterContinental Hotel in Los Angeles. She supposedly fled, then came back, at which point “hotel security staff urged her to get back into a cab and go to her apartment, suggesting that they had seen the security footage showing Mr. Combs beating Ms. Ventura and throwing glass at her in the hotel hallway.”
Combs allegedly paid the hotel $50,000 for the security tape. She reportedly went to Florida after the purported incident, but one of Combs’ business partners allegedly “tracked Ms. Ventura down and told her that her single would not be released if she did not answer Mr. Combs’s phone calls.”
Combs allegedly told Ventura she could not report him to the police because she “had a lot to lose.”
Ventura “became desperate to leave Mr. Combs” in 2017 and 2018, according to the document. In 2018, they reportedly went to dinner in Malibu “for what she believed would be a discussion about concluding their relationship for good.” The suit alleges they went back to her house, which he reportedly paid for, and he raped her.
Following that alleged encounter, Ventura “took steps to completely separate herself from her long-time abuser,” such as leaving the home, returning the car he also bought for her, and ending her contract with Bad Boy Entertainment.
According to the suit, after her relationship with Combs, she “struggled with the physical and mental manifestations of her trauma” and turned to drugs and alcohol.
Ventura’s children, however, “allowed her a new lease on life and gave her purpose. She credits her children with saving her from the trauma that had consumed over a decade of her life.”
Ventura reportedly filed the suit under New York’s Adult Survivors Act, which was signed in 2022 and created a “one-year lookback window for survivors of sexual assault that occurred when they were over the age of 18 to sue their abusers regardless of when the abuse occurred.”
MORE:
TRUE CRIME DAILY: THE PODCAST covers high-profile and under-the-radar cases every week. Subscribe to our YouTube page and don’t forget to follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. You can also subscribe to our True Crime Daily newsletter.
