Cassie got candid about how the aftermath of her relationship with Sean “Diddy” Combs took a heavy mental and emotional toll on her.
“I was spinning out,” the singer, 38, tearfully testified on Wednesday, May 14, during her second day on the stand in Diddy’s sex trafficking trial. “I didn’t want to be alive anymore at that point.”
Cassie (real name Casandra Ventura) explained that years after the alleged abuse by Diddy, 55, she hit a breaking point while shooting a music video in 2023. She shared that she kept having flashbacks from her time with Diddy.
After coming home from the set, she told her husband, Alex Fine, “You can do this without me. You don’t need me anymore.”
Cassie shared that she then tried to walk out the door and into oncoming traffic but Fine, 32, stopped her. (Fine and Cassie, who tied the knot in 2019, share daughters Frankie, 5, and Sunny, 4, and are currently expecting baby No. 3.)
Following the incident, Cassie entered rehab and “trauma therapy.” During her recovery, Cassie began writing a book about her time with Diddy as part of her therapy process. She claimed that she gave a copy of some of the chapters she wrote to Diddy.
“I really wanted Sean to read the information,” she said from the stand. “I wanted him to understand what I had to learn to understand over that period.”
Upon reviewing the content, Cassie claimed that she had a lawyer reach out to Diddy’s team to pay her $30 million for the rights to her story.
“I wanted to be compensated for the time, the pain,” she said, noting that she did not receive any money at that time.
The same year Cassie began her therapeutic treatment, she filed a lawsuit against Diddy accusing him of sexual and physical abuse throughout their relationship, which lasted off and on from 2007 to 2018. Diddy denied her claims in a statement shared by his attorney.
“Mr. Combs vehemently denies these offensive and outrageous allegations,” Diddy’s lawyer Ben Brafman said at the time.
One day after the suit was filed, Diddy and Cassie settled out of court. Cassie stated during her Wednesday testimony that she received $20 million from the settlement.
In May 2024, CNN published a hotel surveillance video of Diddy physically abusing Cassie in the hallway of a hotel room in 2016. He later apologized for his actions in a video shared via Instagram.
Diddy was arrested in September 2024 and charged with sex trafficking, racketeering conspiracy and transportation to engage in prostitution. He pleaded not guilty to all charges and has denied all of the allegations against him.
“We are disappointed with the decision to pursue what we believe is an unjust prosecution of Mr. Combs by the U.S. Attorney’s Office,” Diddy’s attorney Marc Agnifilo said in a statement at the time. “He is an imperfect person, but he is not a criminal. To his credit Mr. Combs has been nothing but cooperative with this investigation and he voluntarily relocated to New York last week in anticipation of these charges. Please reserve your judgment until you have all the facts. These are the acts of an innocent man with nothing to hide, and he looks forward to clearing his name in court.”
Since his arrest, Diddy has been held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn. His four requests for bail were denied by Judge Arun Subramanian.
If you or someone you know is struggling or in crisis, help is available. Call or text 988 or chat at 988lifeline.org. If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, contact the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673). If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence, please call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233 for confidential support. If you or someone you know is a human trafficking victim, contact the National Human Trafficking Hotline at 1-888-373-7888.
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