Only the ninety pop fans will remember Cassie. Maybe some more sound the first bars of their Me & uwhich almost 20 years ago reached the bronze of the acclaimed Billboard list. At that time it was about twenty jet hair, fine eyebrows, lips loaded with Gloss And many golden jewels, as the time marked. Today Cassie has left that name behind and is Casandra Ventura, a 38 -year -old woman, married, with two daughters and the third on the way, who has occupied the headlines of the United States during the last year and a half, but especially this week.
She was the first complainant of Sean combs, after being her partner for more than a decade, and it was known that she was going to testify in the trial against the rapper, known as Puff Daddy or Diddy. But few imagined that their brave testimony before prosecutors and lawyers, but also before the millions of people who devour every detail of the case, was going to be crucial to turn it around, and even to put combs with one foot in jail.
The artist has been the main figure of the combs trial in New York for four days, pregnant eight and a half months, with her husband and father of her children supporting her in the room. Combs has frequently observed it; She has barely crossed her gaze with him. His words have been more than enough. With its very hard testimony, telling the beatings to which the singer subjected it for triggers, the obligation to fold to their sexual whims or even how he raped her in her own home after leaving her, Ventura has set a nail in the artist’s tomb, whose five crimes of sexual traffick years, the rest of his days.
It will be the jury and Judge Arun Subramanian who decide whether a conviction to Sean Com combs corresponds, and what is the sentence, but Ventura has been explicit in his testimony that has marked the rhythm of the Puff Daddy case. So much that, after declaring for the Tuesday and Wednesday, the case was already the case of a couple of minor witnesses – on Thursday the defense had to change the step to interrogate it. Little remained to defend. Diddy’s lawyers, as is better known in the United States, tried to present the case as a minor issue, a domestic incident, jealousy, fighting fights, “consenting trios among adults.” “You can think of him that it is a cocoon, which is bad. But his accusations are not for being a cocoon or evil,” the defenders were outraged. In two days declaring, about 10 hours in total, Cassie put them upside down.
Connecticut’s made it very clear in his testimony, without raising his voice, without fuss or tricks, although sometimes without avoiding tears. Sean combs destroyed his life. Seven years after leaving him he has managed to resume her, thanks to his family, his friends, a husband who has been present at the trial at every moment and a lot of therapy, even with internment. Ventura was little more than a breeding when he met combs. As a family as mixed and normal as any American footnoter (father of the Philippine roots, mother of Mexican and African -American descent), I study singing and dance in his school in Connecticut and his physique made him look for an opportunity as a model, which made the leap to the near New York.
There, dancing in clubs in the mid -2000s, he met producer Ryan Leslie, with whom he left for a couple of years and recorded a theme. It was he who introduced him to the then almighty, be combs, in full swing like Puff Daddy. When he turned 21, celebrating it in Las Vegas, he kissed her in a bathroom. What seemed somewhat platonic between the candidate and the tycoon unemployed in a relationship of more than 10 years that became a loop of abuse.
During his statement, Ventura phrases have been devastating. “There were abuses, many things happened throughout our relationship”; “I felt disgusting, humiliated”; “I despised me a lot”; “I controlled my life a lot”; “I was hit in my head, I pushed me, dragged me, I kicked me, I was trampled my head if I was on the floor”; “I didn’t have the necessary resources to get out and move, to leave and nobody stopped me”; “I didn’t tell my mother’s truth because I was ashamed (…). I didn’t want to put it in danger”; “they took my car. They threw me out of the house, my apartment. I took my jewels”; “I didn’t have much to say at the time, being so young, naive, so complacent.”
As he has told in court, his relationship with combs was not always a relationship as such. In fact, she started professionally: she signed a contract with her record label, Bad Boy Records, to get 10 albums. He could only launch one; He never allowed him to develop his career. Between 2007 and 2018 there were comings, coming, other couples – she left, preventing him from finding out, with rapper Kid Cudi and actor Michael B. Jordan; He had several children and relationships – and especially much under the surface. He often hit him, as soon as he had a slight change of humor or she contradicted him the minimum.
But above all and from the first year of relationship, combs forced Ventura to practice what they called among them Freak-offsa kind of dark parties and orgies, where they hired (she usually did it with money from him) to prostitutes so that she had relations with them and he observed them, masturbating. They made them in their homes and hotels. They lasted up to four days. They used alcohol and drugs, which Ventura herself has recognized that they helped her be less aware of what was happening, although they generated addiction. And also liters of body oil, from baby, which he kept at home. He recorded them and threatened his partner with filtering them on the Internet and shame.
In this week of judgment, Ventura has argued that those Freak-offs They were forced, that he hated them, that he could only try to recover between them. “I had another complete job. Basically, a sex worker,” said the singer on Friday. He couldn’t rebel: he knew that cost him beatings, purple eyes, wounds. On one occasion he hit him after seeing her talk to a producer in a Los Angeles club, “as strong as you can hit someone being that drunk.” In 2013, after a night with friends at home (he paid for rent and had keys he used at discretion), he entered, hit him and hit him in an eyebrow that he still has an scar. In 2016, after a fight at a Los Angeles hotel that recorded the security cameras, he had so many bruises that he had to make up intensely because he presented a film, his first leading role, two days later. In 2018, when he tried to leave him and after a quiet and kind dinner, he took her home and raped her.
It was that year when he met Alex Fine, a personal coach who became a friend, then a lover, later couple and today, husband. It was he who stopped her when, without more, she opened the door of her house to launch between traffic and end her life. With him he managed to escape the circle of abuse. In 2022 he detoxified from drugs. In 2023 he went to a center in Arizona where it was post -traumatic stress. They have had two children, they expect a third. And with all this Ventura gathered strength to sue combs in November 2023, although an extrajudicial agreement (it has been known that 20 million dollars) made the demand withdraw. Even so, the Prosecutor’s Office entered the rag with all its might.
The defense of combs tries to demonstrate that these orgies were partly agreed and consented to by Ventura. She, with monosyllables, tired, hurt, has denied it again and again. His testimony has made clear the abuse system, but fringes are missing: how much their employees knew – which carried condoms, lubricant and oil to the hotel rooms – where the abuses expanded, who allowed it. Ventura’s mother and an ancient better friend – she has told that she lost her friendship after a fight with combs – will testify next week.
She, in principle, will not have to return; Friday ended and has already said that he will not speak. Nor sing or dance: he canceled his last tour and has no intention, for now, to continue in the world. He goes home, to finish his calm pregnancy. “This week has meant an extreme challenge, but it has also given me a lot of strength and has cured me. I hope that my testimony has given strength and voice to other survivors, and that I can help others who have already suffered to speak also cure about abuse and fear. For me, the more I cure, the more I can remember. And the more I can remember, the more I will forget.” She is not the whole game, but the key piece of a board that has marked and will still take a few months to resolve.
In the United States, 1-800-656-Hope (4673) is the free telephone telephone of the Assault Hotline and works 24/7, in English and English in Spanish. There are also WhatsApp chat and An online chat. There are more resources available in Rainn.org.
In Spain, telephone 016 serves victims of sexist violence, their families and their surroundings 24 hours a day, every day of the year, in 53 different languages. The number is not registered on the telephone bill, but you have to erase the device call. You can also contact via email 016-online@igualdad.gob.es and by WhatsApp in the number 600 000 016. The minors can go to the telephone of the Anar 900 20 20 10. If it is an emergency situation, the telephones of the National Police (091) and the Civil Guard (062) can be called at 112 OA. And in case of not being able to call, the alertcops application can be used, from which an alert signal to the police with geolocation is sent.
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