Lawyers for Sean Combs cross-examined a former girlfriend at his federal trial on Tuesday, highlighting her feelings of affection for the music mogul and the agency she had in their relationship in an effort to counter prosecutors’ narrative of a romance curdled by intimidation and coercion.
The woman, Jane, who is appearing in court under a pseudonym to protect her privacy, said that she “felt very loved by him” at times despite their often tumultuous three-year relationship. She said she cherished their time cuddling and watching “Dateline” on television; she bathed Mr. Combs and comforted him with foot rubs. “He was my baby,” Jane said.
Mr. Combs, the music producer and impresario also known as Puff Daddy and Diddy, is charged with sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy. The government has accused him of running a “criminal enterprise” whose objectives included coercing women into sex and covering it up. Following Casandra Ventura, the singer known as Cassie, who testified over four days last month, Jane is the second woman put forward by prosecutors as a victim of sex trafficking.
Mr. Combs has pleaded not guilty, and the defense has argued that Jane and Ms. Ventura were willing participants in sex acts with the mogul.
Under questioning from prosecutors, Jane had described taking part in what she called “hotel nights”: drug-fueled sex marathons with hired male escorts at Mr. Combs’s direction, which she said she did not want to engage in, and led to problems like frequent urinary tract infections.
In her fourth day in court, under cross-examination from Teny Geragos, a lawyer for Mr. Combs, Jane said she was eager to please Mr. Combs, and that she felt their hotel nights satisfied him. She said she accepted that Mr. Combs filmed these encounters, and said she would seek his approval in performing certain sex acts “to turn him on.”
She also described what she called a “chaotic whirlwind of a dark life” — having sex with “strangers” in order to have moments of intimacy with Mr. Combs, and angry bouts of jealousy over the time and rewards Mr. Combs gave to other women in his life.
Ms. Geragos sought to highlight benefits Mr. Combs brought to the relationship, including a $20,000 investment in Jane’s fashion brand and a presence that Jane described as motivating and uplifting at times.
At times on Tuesday, Jane offered starkly contrasting testimony about the same events she had spoken about in previous days, reflecting a relationship that she has described as both loving and manipulative.
Last week, Jane described a hotel night in Turks and Caicos that included four rounds of sex over 24 hours with a hired escort named Paul. It left her “extremely sore” and in tears, Jane said.
In the cross-examination, however, the defense played an audio message that Mr. Combs sent Jane after that trip. On the recording, Mr. Combs gave Jane the nickname “crack pipe.” Jane explained the name on Tuesday, saying it was because Mr. Combs was addicted “to my sex.” Smiling, Jane recalled she had “so much fun” with Mr. Combs on the trip.
Ms. Geragos asked whether at each of the three stops on that trip, “entertainers” — Jane and Mr. Combs’s term for hired escorts — were present. “Unfortunately, yes,” Jane said.
Sitting with his lawyers as he listened to Jane’s testimony, Mr. Combs bounced lightly in his seat. At times during the day when Jane described how he had supported her financially, he nodded.
The defense focused on times when Jane herself reached out to male pornography actors to involve them in the sex nights. She testified that she did so in an attempt to seize some level of control in the unwanted pattern of sex that came to dominate their relationship.
“My choices were made under a lot of emotional pressure due to my relationship with him,” she said.
Jane said that when she and Mr. Combs were with an escort named Paul, they would jokingly call themselves “the trifecta” and take on the names of basketball stars: She was Kobe Bryant, Mr. Combs was Michael Jordan and Paul was Shaquille O’Neal.
But reading from her text messages with Mr. Combs, Jane said that when she projected enthusiasm for their sex nights with male escorts, she was often responding to perceived pressure from him.
Even when Mr. Combs appeared to be solicitous with her — once asking “are you in the mood?” and suggesting “maybe you need a break”— she said she read “undertones” in his words pressuring her to participate. “I hear these things entirely differently,” Jane said.
Still, when asked if she ultimately wanted to break up with Mr. Combs, Jane replied, “Of course not.”
Some of Ms. Geragos’s questions appeared to be an attempt to undermine aspects of the government’s racketeering charge, which contends that Mr. Combs directed a “criminal enterprise” made up of security guards and high-ranking executives from his companies.
Jane said she believed that none of Mr. Combs’s assistants saw the entertainers with her and Mr. Combs, and that Kristina Khorram, Mr. Combs’s former chief of staff, who prosecutors said they consider part of the conspiracy, did not have knowledge of escorts at hotels.
“I can’t have KK know, damn,” Mr. Combs once told Jane in a text.
Seeking to understand Mr. Combs’s interest in hiring escorts for sex, Jane said she researched the word “cuck,” which is short for cuckold — she defined it as referring to a man who watches his female partner having sex with another man. Mr. Combs, she said, often used the words voyeurism or escapism to describe his interest; “I would use the word cuck for him more so,” Jane said.
She also said she found in her research that sometimes, cucks “have a bi-curiosity that they’re too ashamed to experience themselves.”
On the stand Tuesday, Jane said that from the start of their relationship, Mr. Combs was upfront about seeing other women, describing himself as “polyamorous.”
One romantic rival that caused friction in Jane’s relationship with Mr. Combs was Caresha Brownlee, a rapper known as Yung Miami. While Jane’s time with Mr. Combs was private, she said, his relationship with Ms. Brownlee was public and widely documented on social media.
“That was hard to watch,” Jane said, adding that she felt there was an “imbalance” in how much more attention Mr. Combs gave Ms. Brownlee.
Since she first took the stand last Thursday, Jane has recounted vivid details of a troubled relationship with Mr. Combs, which began in 2021 and continued until shortly before his arrest in September 2024.
Even while testifying against him, Jane retains strong ties to Mr. Combs. He is paying her legal expenses as well as the $10,000-a-month rent on her home in Los Angeles.
At the start of her testimony on Tuesday, Jane was asked by Ms. Geragos whether Mr. Combs has ever attempted to interfere with her lawyer’s representation of her.
“No,” Jane answered.
For most of her testimony, Jane has spoken in a clear, even tone of voice, but she seemed to grow testy with questions about her jealousy in seeing Mr. Combs shower attention on another woman.
In a text message to Mr. Combs in 2021, Jane expressed anger at him for asking her for another hotel night, pointing to how another of his girlfriends was posting publicly about their relationship — and was the recent recipient of a Chanel bag.
Ms. Geragos asked if she got a Chanel bag as a gift from Mr. Combs. “No, I only got trauma,” Jane answered.
The defense lawyer suggested that actually she had gotten a pricey bag from Mr. Combs, and that it was from the brand Bottega Veneta. How much do those bags typically cost, Ms. Geragos asked Jane.
“How much does my body cost?” Jane shot back.
Olivia Bensimon contributed reporting.
Ben Sisario, a reporter covering music and the music industry, has been writing for The Times for more than 20 years.
Julia Jacobs is an arts and culture reporter who often covers legal issues for The Times.
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