American hip-hop star Sean Combs – alias Puff Daddy or Diddy on stage – was targeted on Thursday, November 16, by a complaint for rape and physical violence by his former partner, singer Cassie.
This complaint accuses Sean Combs of having transformed the life of the 37-year-old R’n’B singer, dancer and model – real name Casandra Ventura – into a nightmare. It describes “sexual” and “psychological” violence and “deviant behavior” that spanned more than a decade, between 2005 and 2018.
According to a thirty-five-page court document, made public Thursday by the American justice system and first revealed by the New York Times, “Mr. Combs raped Ms. Ventura at her home after she tried to leave him” in 2018 Sean Combs, 54, also “often punched, kicked, slapped and stomped on her, resulting in bruises, burst lips, black eyes and bleeding,” the complaint details. civil filed before the federal prosecutor’s office in Manhattan, New York.
This legal action is made possible thanks to a law in the State of New York which has allowed since November 2022, but for one year only, victims of sexual violence to file a civil complaint for prescribed facts. Ms. Ventura’s complaint also targets the companies and labels of her former partner, musician and rap producer: Bad Boy Entertainment, Bad Boy Records, Epic Records, Combs Enterprises and Doe Corporations 1-10.
“A cycle of assault, violence and sex trafficking”
American justice – which recorded the testimony against Ms. Ventura, who met Mr. Combs in 2005 when she was 19 and he was 37 – accuses the rap star of having engaged in “violent behavior” and “violent deviant demands” for “more than a decade.”
“After years of silence and darkness, I am finally ready to tell my story and speak out on my behalf and for the sake of all other women who experience violence and assault” in their relationships, Cassie wrote in a press release sent by his lawyer Douglas Wigdor. This tenor of the New York bar estimated that “no human being should endure what Ms. Ventura endured” by her “attacker.” According to her complaint, the victim “experienced a ‘dark period,’ trapped by Mr. Combs in a cycle of assault, violence and sex trafficking.”
The complaint describes a violent man, even forcing the victim into filmed sex with male prostitutes. Ms. Ventura “cannot continue to live in silence after what she has endured,” the court document further emphasizes.
The plaintiff further accuses “Mr. Combs [of] remaining immensely powerful and dangerous.” And “Ms. Ventura is seeking justice for the decade of life Mr. Combs took from her through threats of violence, drug addiction, physical and psychological abuse, and sexual slavery.”
Rapper’s lawyer ‘fiercely’ denies allegations
Mr. Combs’ New York lawyer, Ben Brafman, “fiercely” denied the allegations, which he called, in a statement to Agence France-Presse, “insulting and scandalous.”
Sean Combs, 54, founded his company Bad Boy in 1993, during a decade of glory for this major figure in the commercialization and media coverage of the hip-hop scene. Puff Daddy’s disciples include Notorious B.I.G., who died in 1997, and Mary J. Blige. Sean Combs is also part of the hip-hop billionaires’ club, thanks to his business in the alcohol industry.
For Casandra Ventura, it “was obvious that with the very imminent expiration [at the end of November] of the New York law [on the protection of victims of sexual violence], I had the opportunity to speak loud and clear about the trauma that I suffered and from which I will recover during what remains of my life”.