The government was deep into its investigation of Sean Combs — his homes had been raided, footage of a now infamous hotel assault had been released — when he and his girlfriend at the time got into an explosive physical fight, she testified on Monday. The fight left her hiding from him, barefoot, in her neighborhood late at night.
In testimony at Mr. Combs’s federal trial, the woman, who is testifying under the pseudonym Jane, said that in June 2024, she had set up a date night at her home in Los Angeles 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 behind a nearby wall for about two hours, 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. 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, Mr. Combs invited a man over to have sex with her, Jane said — the continuation of a pattern of drug-fueled sex marathons with male prostitutes that lies at the heart of the government’s case.
Through tears, Jane testified that Mr. Combs tried to give her 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.”
Mr. Combs has pleaded not guilty to charges of sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy. His lawyers have acknowledged that he was responsible for domestic violence but have vehemently denied that he coerced Jane and Casandra Ventura, another ex-girlfriend, into sex.
Mr. Combs has already been accused of physical abuse and sexual exploitation by Ms. Ventura, who was in an on-and-off relationship with the mogul for 11 years, in a November 2023 lawsuit.
The lawsuit led to a brief hiatus in Jane’s relationship with Mr. Combs — she said that Ms. Ventura’s account mirrored her own “sexual trauma” — but she soon got back together with him 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 home. When CNN released a video that May of Mr. Combs assaulting Ms. Ventura, Jane was at his home in Miami Beach and reviewed a draft of his apology. Mr. Combs continues to pay her legal fees, she said, as well as her rent.
On Monday, Jane took the stand for her third day of testimony in Federal District Court in Lower Manhattan, recounting her tumultuous relationship with Mr. Combs, which started in 2021.
During hours on the stand, Jane read aloud from dozens of emotionally charged text messages, which had been sent before and after Ms. Ventura’s suit. They included references to what Jane described as threats from Mr. Combs to release sexually explicit videos to her child’s father.
Jane has testified that at the start of her relationship she began to participate in encounters with a succession of hired men — which she 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 rent, creating a dynamic that prosecutors have framed as financial coercion.
“It’s dark, sleazy, and makes me feel disgusted with myself,” Jane texted Mr. Combs in September 2023 of the hotel nights, 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.
As Jane recalled feeling mistreated in the relationship and aggrieved about seeing Mr. Combs’s romantic gestures to other girlfriends, the mogul, sitting in the courtroom between his lawyers, pushed back in his chair, shook his head sharply and rubbed his palm over his face.
The texts in which Jane expressed an aversion to the sex nights were often followed by a reconciliation — and then a return to their familiar pattern.
In October of 2023, Jane and Mr. Combs had a series of communications in which she described herself as feeling sexually “violated” and he responded that she was threatening him. She told him that she felt he had been using the home he paid for as “leverage,” and he responded that she was “crazy” and wrote, “let’s just leave each other alone.”
The next month, Ms. Ventura’s lawsuit was filed. She recounted 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 a pair of 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, a prosecutor, to explain how she interpreted what Mr. Combs told her, Jane said she took it as a reference to him continuing to pay the $10,000 monthly rent on her home.
Jane said she did not know that either of the calls was being recorded.
In the weeks after, Jane said she had texted 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.
Jane testified that at the height of the argument, he threatened over the phone to show sexually explicit videos of her to her child’s father. She then sent a text to Mr. Combs’s chief of staff, Kristina Khorram, writing that Mr. Combs had threatened her with sex tapes, pleading with Ms. Khorram to “talk some sense into him.”
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 agreed to visit him in Miami 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.
Sounding numb, 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.
The pattern of sex with hired men continued into 2024, Jane testified. She said her last sexual encounter like that was in August of that year, the month before Mr. Combs was arrested.
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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