On the 19th day of Sean Combs’s racketeering and sex-trafficking trial, a former girlfriend who is testifying under the pseudonym Jane recounted the chaotic final year of her relationship with the music mogul.
She read aloud scores of text messages between the couple, including her repeated complaints about drug-fueled sexual encounters with male prostitutes, which they called “hotel nights.” She recalled her shock at seeing how those encounters aligned with the “freak-offs” she read about in Casandra Ventura’s November 2023 lawsuit accusing Mr. Combs of sexual exploitation. And she testified about a violent brawl in 2024 that left her hiding barefoot outdoors.
Mr. Combs has pleaded not guilty; his lawyers have acknowledged that he was responsible for domestic violence but have vehemently denied that he coerced Jane and Ms. Ventura into sex.
Here are some takeaways from day in court.
While Mr. Combs was under federal investigation, a beating was followed by unwanted sex.
The government was deep into its investigation of the music mogul — his homes had been raided, footage of a now infamous hotel assault had been released — when he and Jane got into an explosive physical fight in June 2024, she testified on Monday.
Jane had set up a date night at her home in Los Angeles, she testified, when the couple began to argue over another woman he was seeing. She said that she shoved his head into a marble countertop, which escalated to him kicking doors down to get to her, eventually putting her in a chokehold.
“I couldn’t breathe, and I was on my tippy toes,” Jane testified.
Jane eventually escaped and hid from Mr. Combs in her neighborhood for about two hours while barefoot, she testified. When she headed back to the house, she saw him coming toward her on the street. They returned to the house and traded blows. She said he punched and kicked her repeatedly, giving her a black eye and welts on her forehead.
“Sean said, ‘Just put some ice on it and put an outfit on,’” she testified.
After she put on lingerie and heels, a man, invited by Mr. Combs, came over to have sex with her, Jane said.
Through tears, Jane testified that Mr. Combs held out an Ecstasy pill, ordering her to have sex with the escort in front of him. When she repeatedly told him that she didn’t want to, she said, Mr. Combs said to her — his face close to hers — “Is this coercion?”
She performed oral sex on the escort, Jane testified: “I just felt like I wasn’t even in my own body.”
Jane’s legal fees are still being paid by Mr. Combs.
Under questioning from the prosecution, Jane said that Mr. Combs is still paying for her lawyer and her rent. Sitting between his lawyers in the courtroom, Mr. Combs shook his head as Jane acknowledged his continued financial assistance.
After news about Ms. Ventura’s lawsuit broke, Jane said she recognized that Ms. Ventura’s account mirrored her own “sexual trauma.” The couple took a break, but reconciled in early 2024.
Jane was at Mr. Combs’s side through much of the criminal investigation, dating him until his arrest. When the government raided Mr. Combs’s homes in March 2024, federal agents visited her house. When CNN released a video that May of Mr. Combs assaulting Ms. Ventura, Jane was with him in Miami Beach, and reviewed a draft of his apology.
The last time she saw Mr. Combs was in August 2024, she said, when they had their final voyeuristic sex night. The next month, Mr. Combs was arrested, and Jane gradually became a government witness.
Jane was not involved in the initial indictment of Mr. Combs, but she received a subpoena to testify in front of a grand jury that November. She began meeting with prosecutors in January of this year.
Jane repeatedly pushed back on sex with escorts in texts to Mr. Combs.
Jane has testified that at the start of her relationship she began to participate in encounters with a succession of hired men — which the couple called “debauchery” or “hotel nights” — in an effort to fulfill her boyfriend’s fantasies.
The hotel nights left her feeling used, exhausted and at times physically sick, she testified. But Mr. Combs was dismissive whenever she voiced her reluctance, she said, and she continued to participate to please him — and, eventually, out of a fear that he would stop financial support.
In the spring of 2023, Mr. Combs began paying her $10,000-a-month rent, creating a dynamic that prosecutors have framed as financial coercion.
In a series of text messages from that year that were shown to the jury, Jane voiced her aversion to the hotel nights.
“It’s dark, sleazy, and makes me feel disgusted with myself,” Jane texted Mr. Combs in September 2023, adding, “I don’t want to feel obligated to perform these nights with you in fear of losing the roof over my head.”
“I’m not a porn star,” she texted Mr. Combs the next month. “I’m not an animal. I need a break.”
At times, Mr. Combs responded by promising one-on-one time together; in other instances, he rejected her version of events or brought up the home where she lived with her son.
The text disputes were often followed by a reconciliation, and then a return to their familiar pattern.
Jane was stunned to read how Ms. Ventura’s account aligned with hers.
Ms. Ventura filed her lawsuit in late 2023, recounting a similar pattern of sexual encounters with hired men, which Mr. Combs directed, watched and sometimes filmed. In her suit, Ms. Ventura, known as the singer Cassie, said those encounters left her repulsed but she felt unable to say no.
“I almost fainted,” Jane testified, of learning about Ms. Ventura’s suit. “In fact I think I did.”
“There was a whole other woman feeling the same thing,” she added.
Ms. Ventura quickly settled with Mr. Combs for $20 million, but her claims became the basis for a criminal investigation.
Three days after Ms. Ventura’s suit was filed, Jane texted Mr. Combs: “I feel like I’m reading my own sexual trauma. It makes me sick how three solid pages, word for word, is exactly my experiences and my anguish.”
The jury heard recordings of two phone calls between her and Mr. Combs from shortly after the suit was filed. In the first call, Jane, her voice breaking, tells him, “I was just saying all this.”
In the second call, Mr. Combs tells her, “I need your friendship,” and adds, you know you ain’t got to worry about nothing else.” Asked by Maurene Comey, the lead prosecutor, to explain how she interpreted what Mr. Combs had told her, Jane said she took it as a reference to him continuing to pay the rent on her home.
Jane said she did not know that either of the calls was being recorded.
In the weeks after, Jane continued to text Mr. Combs about her “trauma and pain” surrounding the sex nights. She told Mr. Combs that she had turned down work opportunities and other relationships to “cater to his fetishes.” Jane testified that after Mr. Combs suggested in a FaceTime conversation that she “charge” him for her resentment, she suggested a price, causing the exchange to devolve into Mr. Combs calling her a “con artist” and threatening to call the police. At the height of the argument, Jane testified, Mr. Combs threatened over the phone to show sexually explicit videos of her to her child’s father.
Jane and Mr. Combs didn’t speak for some time, she said, but just over a month after the fight, Mr. Combs sent her an affectionate message, and she eventually agreed to visit him in Florida for her birthday. The celebration at his home had candles, balloons, gifts and a five-course dinner — the kind of birthday she had always wanted, she testified.
They took Ecstasy and had sex, Jane testified, and as it became morning, Mr. Combs asked her, “Do you want to see Don?,” referring to a man they often hired for hotel nights.
She said she told him, “OK.” Asked by a prosecutor why she agreed, Jane testified that she was so used to the outcome that she just accepted it.
Olivia Bensimon contributed reporting.
Julia Jacobs is an arts and culture reporter who often covers legal issues for The Times.
Ben Sisario, a reporter covering music and the music industry, has been writing for The Times for more than 20 years.
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