\n<\/p>\n
\n\tFour months after she gave harrowing testimony at Sean \u201cDiddy\u201d Combs\u2019 criminal trial in New York, Casandra \u201cCassie\u201d Ventura submitted a victim impact statement late Monday, urging a judge to hand the disgraced music mogul a sentence that reflects \u201cthe truths at hand that the jury failed to see.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tVentura\u2019s new three-page letter was filed along with prosecutors\u2019 request that Combs be sentenced on Friday to at least 11 years and three months in prison for his recent conviction on two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution. At Combs\u2019 eight-week trial, jurors found that he transported male escorts across state lines to engage in highly orchestrated sex marathons with Ventura and another ex-girlfriend who testified under the pseudonym Jane. The jurors acquitted Combs of his more serious charges of racketeering conspiracy and the alleged sex trafficking of Ventura and Jane.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cFor four days in May, while nine months pregnant with my son, I testified in front of a packed courtroom about the most traumatic and horrifying chapter in my life. I testified that from age nineteen, Sean Combs used violence, threats, substances, and control over my career to trap me in over a decade of abuse. He groomed me into performing repeated sex acts with hired male sex workers during multi-day \u2018freak-offs,\u2019 which occurred nearly weekly,\u201d Ventura alleged in her letter. \u201cI was forced into lingerie and heels, told exactly how to look, and plied with drugs and alcohol so he could control me like a puppet. These events were degrading and disgusting, leaving me with infections, illnesses, and days of physical and emotional exhaustion before he demanded it all again. Sex acts became my full-time job, used as the only way to stay in his good graces.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tVentura, 39, told U.S. District Court Judge Arun Subramanian that when Combs, 55, requested a freak-off, she had no choice. \u201cRefusing meant punishment\u2014losing my car, my phone, or worse. He controlled every part of my livelihood and threatened to destroy my reputation by leaking sex tapes, a threat he repeated often,\u201d she wrote. \u201cWhen he believed I had wronged him or was not sufficiently responsive, he also threatened people around me and those close to me, including my family. I regularly worried that displeasing him meant putting my family and friends\u2019 safety at risk.\u201d<\/p>\n
\t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n
\n\tThe singer claimed that beyond the alleged threats, Combs controlled her with brutal violence. \u201cOver the nearly eleven years we were together, Sean Combs would hit me, punch me, stomp on my face, pull my hair, and throw my body to the ground and against the wall. The jury saw pictures of bruises on my back from Combs kicking me and saw the deep gash over my eye he caused when he slammed me into a bed frame,\u201d she continued. \u201cThe entire courtroom watched actual footage of Combs kicking and beating me as I tried to run away from a freak-off in 2016. People watched this footage dozens of times, seeing my body thrown to the ground, my hands over my head, curled into a fetal position to shield me from the worst blows.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tVentura wrote that she eventually became addicted to the drugs that she used to \u201cnumb\u201d herself to the physical and emotional pain she was suffering. \u201cWhile the defense attorneys at trial suggested that my time with Combs was akin to a \u2018great modern love story,\u2019 nothing could be further from the truth. Nothing about this story is great, modern, or loving\u2014this was a horrific decade of my life stained by abuse, violence, forced sex, and degradation,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe \u201cseemingly insurmountable level of trauma\u201d she endured led her to thoughts of suicide, Ventura said. The artist credited intervention and support from her family for saving her.<\/p>\n
\n\tVentura said that she still suffers from \u201cnightmares and flashbacks\u201d and continues to \u201crequire psychological care to cope\u201d with her past. She wrote that she still worries that Combs or his associates will come after her and her family. Ventura added that although her family has moved out of the New York area, she keeps \u201cas private and quiet as I possibly can because I am so scared that if he walks free, his first actions will be swift retribution towards me and others who spoke up about his abuse at trial.\u201d<\/p>\n
\t\tRelated Content<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n
\n\tShe added, \u201cAs much progress as I have made in recovering from his abuse, I remain very much afraid of what he is capable of and the malice he undoubtedly harbors towards me for having the bravery to tell the truth.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tVentura scoffed at the claim by Combs\u2019 lawyers that he is a changed man who now hopes to counsel others in the area of domestic abuse. \u201cThis disgusts me,\u201d she wrote. \u201cHe is not being truthful. I know that who he was to me\u2014the manipulator, the aggressor, the abuser, the trafficker\u2014is who he is as a human. He has no interest in changing or becoming better. He will always be the same cruel, power-hungry, manipulative man that he is.\u201d She said that when she first sued Combs in November 2023, he denied her claims of abuse. It wasn\u2019t until a video leaked to CNN showing Combs\u2019 2016\u00a0assault of Ventura\u00a0inside Los Angeles\u2019 now-shuttered InterContinental Hotel that he finally publicly apologized, she said.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cThanks to the footage and my testimony, this is also something he will forever be associated with. For over a decade, Sean Combs made me feel powerless and unimportant, but my experience was real, horrific, and deserves to be considered,\u201d she wrote. \u201cWhile the jury did not seem to understand or believe that I engaged in freak-offs because of the force and coercion the defendant used against me, I know that is the truth, and his sentence should reflect the reality of the evidence and my lived experience as a victim.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tVentura said that while she hopes for \u201cjustice and accountability,\u201d she has learned \u201cto not trust anything.\u201d Still, she has some faith that Judge Subramanian will issue a sentence that \u201cconsiders the truths at hand that the jury failed to see,\u201d she wrote.<\/p>\n
\n\tIn their separate sentencing memo filed last week, Combs\u2019 defense asked for a sentence of no more than 14 months in prison. Judge Subramanian will have wide latitude at Combs\u2019 Oct. 3 sentencing. It\u2019s not clear how he will rule, but on the day of the jury\u2019s verdict, when many speculated that Combs\u2019 acquittal on his top charges would lead to his immediate release on bail pending sentencing, the judge took a hard line. He denied the release on the basis that Combs\u2019 defense voluntarily admitted during the trial that Combs was violent with Ventura and Jane.<\/p>\n
\t\tTrending Stories<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n
\n\tCombs\u2019 lead defense lawyer, Mark Agnifilo, explicitly told jurors in his closing argument that the defense wasn\u2019t challenging the women\u2019s claims of domestic violence. \u201cIn terms of owning, just as a matter of personal responsibility \u2026 owning the domestic violence, we own it. It happened,\u201d Agnifilo told the panel in his final address on June 27. \u201cIf he was charged with domestic violence, we wouldn\u2019t all be here having a trial, because he would have pled guilty \u2014 because he did that.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tIn their own letter filed on Monday, Cassie\u2019s parents, Regina and Rodrick Ventura, urged the judge to consider the precedent the sentencing would set for future cases. \u201cTo sentence lightly in this case that involved such vicious abuses of our daughters\u2019 body, safety and dignity is to dismiss her very existence,\u201d her parents wrote. \u201cTo sentence lightly would also send a dangerous message. A sentence that is handed down in months instead of years, sends a message that such repulsive behavior can happen without meaningful consequence.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Four months after she gave harrowing testimony at Sean \u201cDiddy\u201d Combs\u2019 criminal trial in New York, Casandra \u201cCassie\u201d Ventura submitted a victim impact statement late Monday, urging a judge to hand the disgraced music mogul a sentence that reflects \u201cthe truths at hand that the jury failed to see.\u201d Ventura\u2019s new three-page letter was filed<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24833,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[505,15051,1843,1842,11764,4543,741,1841,14865],"class_list":{"0":"post-24832","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-ahead","9":"tag-cassie","10":"tag-combs","11":"tag-diddy","12":"tag-emotional","13":"tag-letter","14":"tag-pens","15":"tag-sean","16":"tag-sentencing"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24832","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24832"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24832\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/24833"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}