Documents filed on Friday suggest that Sean “Diddy” Combs’ ex-girlfriend will testify against him at his upcoming federal sex trafficking trial in New York.
The prosecutors’ filing stated that “Victim-1” will take the stand without using a pseudonym. Sources told People that “Victim-1″ is Cassie Ventura, 38, who was reportedly filmed being attacked by Combs at a California hotel in 2016.
Footage of the assault surfaced in May 2024, months before Combs’ arrest on federal sex trafficking and racketeering charges.
“Victim-2, Victim-3, and Victim-4 have asked that their identities not be revealed to the press or the public,” prosecutors wrote in the latest filing.
In March 2024, federal authorities raided Combs’ homes in Holmby Hills, California, and Miami. Reports indicated that the raid was connected to an ongoing sex trafficking investigation that resulted in his arrest months later.
The reported raids also occurred four months after his ex-girlfriend, R&B singer Cassie Ventura, accused him of sex trafficking and abuse. In a multimillion-dollar lawsuit, she alleged that Combs drugged her and forced her to have sex with other men. The pair settled the lawsuit a day after its filing.
Two more accusers came forward a week after Ventura’s lawsuit. One of the women claimed Combs drugged and raped her at Syracuse University in New York in 1991. Combs denied those allegations before a third accuser, Liza Gardner, levied similar allegations against him.
In that case, Gardner claimed Combs and singer-songwriter Aaron Hall drugged and raped her and a friend following an Uptown Records event in 1990. Gardner said she was 16 at the time of the incident. She also accused Combs of choking her a day after the assault
Days after footage of the 2016 assault was publicized, two more women filed lawsuits against Combs. One of those women was April Lampros, a New York Fashion Institute of Technology student who reportedly met Combs in 1994. Lampros accused Combs of sexually assaulting her on four occasions between the mid-1990s and the early 2000s.
Lampros claimed Combs promised to mentor her and connect her with executives in the fashion industry. Instead, Combs allegedly forced her to drink before raping her in a hotel room. Lampros recalled another instance in which Combs forced her to perform oral sex on her in a parking garage while a parking attendant watched.
Combs has been accused of committing or facilitating sexual abuse in at least 30 other lawsuits — including one, filed in October, which alleges he and Jay-Z raped a 13-year-old girl in New York in 2000. The accuser in that case had her lawsuit dismissed in February.
Last week, federal prosecutors filed additional charges against Combs. They alleged Combs transported a woman against her will to carry out commercial sex acts. The woman was not publicly named.
Combs’ trial is expected to start in early May.
[Feature Photo: Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP]
