Months after the viral trial of Sean “Diddy” Combs began, the alleged victims who testified against Combs are still enduring the media circus—and bracing for the aftermath of his upcoming sentencing.
Casandra “Cassie” Ventura, who was entangled with Combs for 11 years, first sued the music and fashion mogul in October 2023 for physical and sexual abuse. Though her civil complaint was quickly settled, it also inspired a slew of other women to allege that they too endured abuse by Combs. A two-month criminal trial concluded in July 2025, with Combs acquitted on charges of racketeering and sex-trafficking; he was found guilty of two lesser counts of prostitution. Combs had pleaded not guilty to all charges against him. Combs’s sentencing will be announced this week, two years after Ventura’s initial lawsuit. Until then, he remains in jail.
Ventura, who testified against Combs in the criminal case, wrote a letter to Judge Arun Subramanian of the Southern District of New York in which she details concerns over her safety if Combs were to “walk free.” The letter was obtained by TMZ—a publication whose cofounder, Harvey Levin, cohosts a podcast with defense attorney Mark Geragos, the father of one of Combs’s lawyers, Teny Geragos.
“If there is one thing I have learned from this experience, it is that victims and survivors will never be safe,” wrote Ventura, detailing how she had to relive the “most traumatic and horrifying chapter in my life” during the trial against Combs.
From the time Ventura was 19, she recounted in the letter, Combs allegedly “used violence, threats, substances, and control over my career to trap me in over a decade of abuse,” and forced her to participate in near-weekly “freak-offs” with male sex workers. “These events were degrading and disgusting,” Ventura reiterated, claiming that she was often left with infections and illnesses from the encounters.
“Sex acts became my full-time job, used as the only way to stay in [Combs’s] good graces,” Ventura wrote. “I regularly worried that displeasing him meant putting my family and friends’ safety at risk…. The horrors I endured drove me to have thoughts of suicide—ones I almost followed through on, if not for my family’s intervention and urging that I seek professional care.”
If Combs does not serve time in prison, Ventura wrote, she fears that “his first actions will be swift retribution towards me and others who spoke up about his abuse at trial.… I remain very much afraid of what he is capable of and the malice he undoubtedly harbors towards me for having the bravery to tell the truth.”
A hotel security video of Combs violently beating Ventura was one of the many key pieces of evidence against the rapper at his trial; even Combs’s lead attorney, Marc Agnifilo, said during the closing remarks that there was no debate as to whether Combs physically abused Ventura. “We own the domestic violence,” Agnifilo said.
While Combs’s defense team argued that Combs has changed since assaulting and abusing Ventura and additional alleged victims, Ventura is determined to remind Judge Subramanian what Combs is capable of.
“He will always be the same cruel, power-hungry, manipulative man that he is,” she wrote in the letter. “I hope that your sentencing decision reflects the strength it took for victims of Sean Combs to come forward. I hope that your decision considers the many lives that Sean Combs has upended with his abuse and control.” Vanity Fair has reached out to a representative for Combs for comment on the letter.
Rumors have swirled that President Donald Trump might waive Combs’s jail time entirely if he is sentenced to additional incarceration, although Combs’s legal team has offered differing statements on the path to a pardon. (Combs attorney Nicole Westmoreland recently told CNN that the team has “reached out and had conversations in reference to a pardon,” while Agnifilo told CBS News that he has “nothing to do with a possible pardon.”)
During her closing remarks, Assistant US Attorney for the Southern District of New York Maurene Comey claimed that Combs “never thought that the women he abused would have the courage to speak out loud what he had done to them.” Ventura has now made herself heard—as have prosecutors who say they want Combs to serve 11 years in prison.
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