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Sean “Diddy” Combs’ former partner Casandra Ventura told jurors at the music mogul’s sex trafficking trial Tuesday how he “controlled” her life and wielded compromising sexual blackmail material to keep her in line, reported AFP.
Jurors have heard the hip-hop icon used violence and threats of reputational ruin to manipulate women, including Ventura, whom he allegedly abused for years.
“(Combs) controlled a lot of my life,” said Ventura, who is heavily pregnant and will take regular breaks from her graphic testimony that could last several days.
“He had many resources” to potentially use compromising sexual videos of Ventura to exploit the celebrated singer and model, she said, pausing to dab her eye with a tissue.
In a hotel surveillance clip from March 2016 shown to jurors Monday, Combs is apparently seen brutally beating and dragging Ventura – widely known as “Cassie” – down a hallway.
A former security officer at a Los Angeles-area InterContinental hotel, Israel Florez, told the court Monday that he was first on the scene after the incident and that Combs sought to pay him off.
Florez’s testimony provided the foundation for the prosecution to introduce the security footage that was published by CNN last year.
The panel of 12 jurors and six alternates responsible for determining Combs’s fate heard of the famed artist’s explosive outbursts and an attempt to preserve his own reputation and celebrity through bribery.
But the 55-year-old’s defense team insisted that while some of his behavior was questionable – at times constituting domestic abuse – it did not amount to evidence of racketeering and sex trafficking with which he is charged.
Combs has pleaded not guilty on all counts, including the racketeering charge that the hip-hop pioneer led a sex crime ring that included drug-fueled sex parties by use of force, threats and violence.
