Content warning: This story describes domestic violence and alleged sexual assault.
After Sean “Diddy” Combs’s not-guilty verdict on the most serious charges against him, the mogul may soon declare himself a vindicated man. As we’ve seen so many other men do in the past, Combs could return to public life. He could dismiss the fact that he once faced a potential life sentence in relation to both the racketeering and sex trafficking charges as a blip in his personal history and assume that his public apology for his admitted domestic violence, which he was never charged for, was sufficient. But we saw the video of him violently attacking his ex-girlfriend Casandra Ventura (also known as Cassie), and heard what she said he did to her in court. We won’t forget it.
The surveillance video of Combs and Ventura at a Los Angeles hotel in 2016 was irrefutable evidence of Combs’s domestic violence, so rare in cases where men are accused of assaulting women either sexually or physically (though, of course, it should be enough that when a woman reveals she has been assaulted that society takes her at her word). In Combs’s case, the video was so damning that his defense admitted up front that he had been violent, but they claimed that he was “not a criminal” (he was not charged with domestic violence).
The footage was a window into the type of intimate-partner violence that is far from rare (24% of women in the US will experience severe physical assault by a partner in their lifetime) but is rarely seen or prosecuted.
Ventura detailed in an excruciating marathon testimony last month during the trial that what the world saw was only the tip of the iceberg of what she says Combs inflicted on her during their decade-long relationship.
Combs was charged in federal court in New York with five counts—racketeering conspiracy; two counts of sex trafficking by force, fraud, or coercion; and two counts each of transportation to engage in prostitution—and much of the evidence presented came directly from Ventura’s testimony, which she gave when she was mere weeks away from giving birth to her third child. She described how she said Combs forced her to engage in drug-fueled orgies with prostitutes known as “freak-offs,” and assaulted her physically and sexually.
If Ventura did not comply, prosecutor Emily A. Johnson said in her opening statement, she would be attacked.
“If Cassie didn’t do what the defendant wanted, the consequences were severe,” said Johnson. “Physically, the defendant beat her viciously, exploding over even the tiniest slight and beating her to show who was in charge.… The defendant taught Cassie that defying him could and often would end in violence. And when she tried to run away, he always found her.”
We saw that exact scenario—Combs beating his girlfriend as she tried to escape—with our own eyes on the tape. But the trial focused on the other allegations, that Combs engaged in a pattern of organized illegal activity (racketeering), that he sex trafficked Ventura and another former partner, known as Jane Doe, and also transported both women for prostitution. For these charges, Ventura could only tell her story.
