Casandra Ventura, the singer known as Cassie, testified on Wednesday that Sean Combs raped her in 2018, was frequently physically abusive to her and others, and blackmailed her by threatening to release explicit videos that would have damaged her career.
She will be cross-examined by the defense on Thursday.
The prosecution contends that Ms. Ventura and another woman were coerced into drug-dazed marathon sex sessions that Mr. Combs called freak-offs. He has pleaded not guilty to sex-trafficking and racketeering conspiracy charges and said the sexual encounters were consensual.
Here are four takeaways from her second day of testimony:
Long stretches of testimony were about Mr. Combs’s violent outbursts.
The day began with Ms. Ventura describing the 2016 assault that many have seen in the hotel surveillance video broadcast by CNN. But she spent long stretches of testimony detailing several instances of Mr. Combs’s violence, committed against her and others, that made the footage seem mild in comparison.
Prosecutors entered into evidence several photos that showed bruises on her face and body, which she said were sustained in beatings that occurred “too frequently.”
Remaining dispassionate on the witness stand, Ms. Ventura described hiding under a toilet as Mr. Combs kicked her, leaving her in such bad shape that one of his male employees cried after seeing her. When Mr. Combs threw her into a bed frame, she testified, she suffered a gash over her eye that required sutures. Another beating left her bloodied and vomiting, she testified.
Mr. Combs could also be violent to her friends and his romantic rivals, Ms. Ventura testified. She identified a friend known as Bana who, she said, Mr. Combs dangled over her apartment balcony: “I saw him bring her back over the railing of the balcony and then throw her onto the patio furniture.”
Ms. Ventura also testified about Mr. Combs’s reaction when he learned — by looking through her phone during a freak-off — that she had begun dating the rapper Kid Cudi. Mr. Combs, furious, told her that he was going to hurt both of them, and that the rapper’s car would be “blown up.”
Freak-off videos were used as blackmail, Ms. Ventura said.
Sexually explicit video recordings of the freak-offs that Ms. Ventura said she was forced to participate in were wielded by Mr. Combs to threaten her with blackmail, she testified on Wednesday.
After she dated someone else, Mr. Combs told her, “I’m going to put out two embarrassing videos of you,” Ms. Ventura recalled. She added that she thought he “just wanted to hurt me.”
Another time, after Ms. Ventura tried to avoid sitting next to Mr. Combs on a plane, he pulled up freak-off videos on his laptop that she thought had been deleted, according to her testimony. She says Combs told her that he was going to “embarrass me and release them.”
“I just felt trapped,” she testified.
Ms. Ventura also said she worried that Mr. Combs would put her career in jeopardy by releasing the intimate videos. “I just feared for my career, I feared for my family,” she said. “It’s just embarrassing. And it’s horrible and disgusting. No one should do that to anyone.”
Ms. Ventura received a $20 million settlement from Mr. Combs.
Ms. Ventura acknowledged in her testimony that she had been paid $20 million to settle a civil suit she brought against Mr. Combs in 2023. Prosecutors appeared to draw forth that testimony in an effort to inoculate her from expected efforts to impeach her credibility during cross-examination on Thursday.
The defense has suggested that Ms. Ventura used her accounts of violence by Mr. Combs to extract a payday from him, first by saying she was writing a memoir and then by filing her bombshell lawsuit that asserted he had been abusive. Mr. Combs settled the suit only a day later, but the financial payment was not defined until Wednesday.
Prosecutors also had Ms. Ventura discuss her drug use when she was not with Mr. Combs and the fact that she had hit him at times in their relationship. She said that, despite her best efforts on one occasion, when she punched him while drunk, she never thought she had actually caused an injury.
Testimony touched on the sex-trafficking and racketeering conspiracy charges.
Ms. Ventura has provided graphic testimony about consistent and repeated instances of physical violence and drug-fueled marathon sex sessions that left her ashamed, depleted and injured, all directed by Mr. Combs. She has said recordings of the freak-offs were “blackmail materials” that he threatened to release to humiliate her.
But the music mogul is not charged with assault, rape or blackmail. The core charges address sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy, which some of Ms. Ventura’s testimony addressed on Wednesday.
One prosecutor, Emily A. Johnson, asked Ms. Ventura where the freak-offs took place and which male escorts were present. She showed Ms. Ventura photos of 13 escorts, with names including Ash, Tommy, Greg and a man known as “Islander.” Ms. Ventura also listed some of the cities where she and Mr. Combs had freak-offs with the men: Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Las Vegas, Ibiza.
The direction of the testimony suggested that, under the guidance of Mr. Combs, the escorts and Ms. Ventura had been made to travel for the purpose of sexual encounters in different locations.
Ms. Johnson also asked Ms. Ventura about members of Mr. Combs’s team and employees who knew about and facilitated these activities.
Ms. Ventura testified about a security guard who hosted her at his home after the 2016 hotel hallway assault and, at another point brought her to a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon to repair a gash on her eyebrow after Mr. Combs threw her into a corner of a bed; and an escort who, with Mr. Combs, was present when she blacked out on the drug GHB in a motel shower in the Hamptons.
Ms. Ventura said that several of Mr. Combs’s employees witnessed him abusing her over the years. She said at least one assistant told her he quit because of the way Mr. Combs had treated her.
Julia Jacobs is an arts and culture reporter who often covers legal issues for The Times.
Joe Coscarelli is a culture reporter for The Times who focuses on popular music and a co-host of the Times podcast “Popcast (Deluxe).”
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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