A former assistant to Sean Combs who said that he threatened her, threw objects at her and sexually assaulted her during her years working for him came under close questioning on Friday from a lawyer for the music mogul.
The former employee, referred to in court by the pseudonym Mia, testified this week that while working for Mr. Combs, she was subjected to a grueling work environment characterized by sleep deprivation and violent outbursts that she said left her traumatized.
Mia is key to helping the government try to prove racketeering conspiracy and sex-trafficking charges against Mr. Combs. Prosecutors have accused him of subjecting Mia to forced labor — including sexual activity — through violence and threats of serious harm.
During cross-examination, Brian Steel, a lawyer for Mr. Combs, sought to show the jury another side of Mia’s time working for the famous record producer. The defense displayed posts from her Instagram account that showed her posing beside and celebrating Mr. Combs, a person she called her “mentor” and “inspiration,” as well as marveling at her good fortune to be working for him — years after she says he first sexually assaulted her.
“Why would you promote the person who has stolen your happiness in life?” Mr. Steel asked her.
“Those are the only people I was around, so that was my life,” Mia replied.
Mr. Combs has vehemently denied sexually assaulting anyone. Lawyers for the music mogul, who has pleaded not guilty to all of the charges against him, have acknowledged that their client has a history of violence and a “bad temper,” but they have asserted that he is not a racketeer or sex trafficker.
As a part of Mr. Combs’s entourage from 2009 to 2017, Mia — who called Mr. Combs by the nickname “Puff” on the stand — recalled becoming enmeshed in the life of a high-flying record executive, partying with him and accompanying him on luxury vacations, while also being subjected to explosive outbursts.
When Mr. Combs did not think she was performing her duties quickly enough, he became violent, she said — one time he threw a bowl of spaghetti at her, she said, and another, a computer. (Both of them missed, she said.) Once, on a yacht in the Caribbean, she testified, he asked her to count the cash in a safe, then grew irate when he deemed her counting too slow.
“He chased me out and cursed at me and told me, ‘You better learn to walk on water like Jesus, bitch,’” Mia said on Friday.
Mia is also a valuable witness to prosecutors because, during her employment, she became a close confidante to Casandra Ventura, the music mogul’s on-and-off girlfriend of 11 years, whose recounting of brutal violence, meticulous control and marathon sexual encounters with male prostitutes, known as “freak-offs,” are at the heart of the government’s case.
Prosecutors focused in on a dispute between Mr. Combs and Mia that arose in 2015, when Mia was in South Africa with Ms. Ventura, known as the singer Cassie.
Around that time, Mia testified, Ms. Ventura had found evidence that Mr. Combs was seeing another woman, prompting her to cut off contact with him. Mia said she received a barrage of calls and messages from Mr. Combs and one of his associates, who were trying to convince Ms. Ventura to call Mr. Combs.
When she got on the phone with Mr. Combs, Mia said, “He was threatening my job and then he threatened to kill me.”
Jurors saw a series of escalating messages from Mr. Combs to Mia in which he demanded that she call him and, if she didn’t, he wrote, “Imma tell everything” — a threat that Mia said referenced the sexual assaults, which she said Ms. Ventura was unaware of.
“Let’s go to war,” Mr. Combs wrote to Mia when his demands were not met.
On Thursday, Mia described an unwanted kiss from Mr. Combs soon after she started working for him, testifying that she had hoped it was an “accident” that would never happen again. She wept at times on the stand as she described two sexual assaults that followed, including forced oral sex in his bedroom closet and an incident in which she said she woke up in his Los Angeles home to find him on top of her. She testified that she “froze” and did not react as he penetrated her.
Mia testified that she did not report the assaults or tell anyone about them because she feared retaliation from Mr. Combs. “I didn’t want to lose everything that I worked so hard for,” she said.
During cross-examination, Mr. Combs’s lawyers are expected to highlight the fact that when Mia began cooperating with the government, she did not initially disclose the allegations of sexual assault.
“I was going to die with this — I didn’t want anyone to know ever,” she testified under questioning from the prosecution.
After spending years as a personal assistant for Mr. Combs, Mia testified that she was promoted to work on film and television projects, though she continued to carry out the duties of an assistant as well. In 2016, she said, her working relationship with Mr. Combs deteriorated after she was told that he no longer wanted to invest in film work. She hired a lawyer and disclosed a couple of instances in which Mr. Combs was violent with her during mediation discussions, she testified; she said she ultimately received a settlement of around $400,000, about half of which she said went to her lawyers.
After Ms. Ventura filed a bombshell lawsuit against Mr. Combs in November 2023, accusing him of years of physical and sexual abuse, Mia received text messages and calls from Mr. Combs and a member of his inner circle asking to speak with her. She responded enthusiastically via text to his associate, with whom she said she had a good relationship. But she did not respond when Mr. Combs texted her in February 2024 asking for help getting his “memory jogged on some things.”
“I just didn’t want anything to do with him at all,” Mia testified.
Ben Sisario contributed reporting.
Julia Jacobs is an arts and culture reporter who often covers legal issues for The Times.
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