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- Cassie Ventura has urged Sean "Diddy" Combs' judge to consider his abuse in his sentencing decision.Combs was convicted of prostitution-related counts, but acquitted of more serious charges.Ventura, who testified at Combs' trial, told the judge that she fears retribution from Combs.
R&B singer Cassie Ventura — the star witness at Sean "Diddy" Combs' recent criminal trial — told the hip-hop mogul's Manhattan sentencing judge she's terrified he may soon be released from behind bars.
In a victim impact statement submitted to US District Judge Arun Subramanian on Tuesday, Ventura, Combs' ex-girlfriend of more than a decade, urged the judge to consider the "many lives" Combs has "upended with his abuse and control."
"My worries that Sean Combs or his associates will come after me and my family is my reality," Ventura wrote in the court filing. She said she has moved out of New York and is "keeping as 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."
Combs is scheduled to be sentenced on Friday for his conviction on two prostitution-related federal charges. The "I'll Be Missing You" rapper's lawyers have said in a lengthy presentencing submission that Combs should serve no more than 14 months behind bars.
If Combs gets his way at sentencing, he'd soon be released, as he has been locked up at a Brooklyn federal jail for a year.
Prosecutors, however, told the judge in court papers filed on Tuesday that Combs should be sentenced to at least 11 years in prison.
Ventura's submission to the judge included a supporting letter from her parents and was part of a package of statements backing Tuesday's sentencing request from prosecutors.
In her letter to the judge, Ventura said she hopes his sentencing decision "reflects the strength it took for victims of Sean Combs to come forward."
"He has no interest in changing or becoming better," Ventura said of Combs. "He will always be the same cruel, power-hungry, manipulative man that he is."
Ventura added, "For over a decade, Sean Combs made me feel powerless and unimportant, but my experience was real, horrific, and deserves to be considered."
In Combs' criminal case, prosecutors had alleged that Combs sex-trafficked Ventura and another ex, coercing them into drug-fueled sex performances with male escorts called "freak offs" that Combs would arrange, masturbate to, and often record.
Combs' jury cleared Combs of the more serious sex-trafficking and racketeering conspiracy charges against him, but found him guilty of two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution.
"While 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," Ventura wrote.
At Combs' trial, Ventura, at the time eight months pregnant, gave sometimes tearful testimony, telling the jury about the abuse she said she suffered at Combs' hands during their on-and-off 11-year relationship.
"While the defense attorneys at trial suggested that my time with Combs was akin to a 'great modern love story,' nothing could be further from the truth," Ventura wrote in her letter to the judge.
"Nothing about this story is great, modern, or loving—this was a horrific decade of my life stained by abuse, violence, forced sex, and degradation," she said.
Ventura's parents, Regina and Rodrick Ventura, submitted a joint letter that argued, "To sentence lightly in this case that involved
such vicious abuses of our daughters' body, safety and dignity is to dismiss her very existence."
A light sentence would send a dangerous message "that such repulsive behavior can happen without meaningful consequence," they wrote.
Regina Ventura also testified at Combs' trial, telling jurors of what she said was a physical fight with the rapper after he stole her daughter's cellphone in 2016.
