Behind the mask of his public persona as “Diddy,” Sean Combs is a “cruel, power-hungry, manipulative” and vicious man incapable of rehabilitation, his ex-girlfriend and star witness at his trial, Casandra Ventura, told a judge in court filings Tuesday, as the feds sought a prison term of more than 11 years.
In a letter to Manhattan Federal Judge Arun Subramanian included in the government’s sentencing submission, Ventura, also known as Cassie, said she hoped the punishment he imposed on Friday “considers the truths at hand that the jury failed to see.”
“For four days in May, while nine months pregnant with my son, I testified in front of a packed courtroom about the most traumatic and horrifying chapter in my life. I testified that from age nineteen, Sean Combs used violence, threats, substances, and control over my career to trap me in over a decade of abuse,” Ventura wrote, detailing how she was groomed for weekly marathon sex sessions with male sex workers and plied with drugs and alcohol.
“These events were degrading and disgusting, leaving me with infections, illnesses, and days of physical and emotional exhaustion before he demanded it all again.”
Ventura noted that pushing back on Combs’ demands could mean losing her car, access to her phone, “or worse.”
“He controlled every part of my livelihood and threatened to destroy my reputation by leaking sex tapes, a threat he repeated often,” she wrote. “When he believed I had wronged him or was not sufficiently responsive, he also threatened people around me and those close to me, including my family.”
Ventura said the outcome of Combs’ seven-week trial, which saw him convicted on July 2 of transporting people for prostitution but acquitted of sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy counts, had led her to conclude “victims and survivors will never be safe.”
“The jury saw pictures of bruises on my back from Combs kicking me and saw the deep gash over my eye he caused when he slammed me into a bed frame. The entire courtroom watched actual footage of Combs kicking and beating me as I tried to run away from a freak off in 2016,” she wrote.
“People watched this footage dozens of times, seeing my body thrown to the ground, my hands over my head, curled into a fetal position to shield me from the worst blows.”
The filing by the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office asked Subramanian to impose a term of 135 months, just over 11 years, imploring the judge to take into account the manner in which he committed his crimes.
“His crimes of conviction are serious and have warranted sentences over ten years in multiple cases for defendants who, like Sean Combs, engaged in violence and put others in fear,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Meredith Foster wrote.
Foster said a substantial term was also warranted as Combs had proven himself “unrepentant,” conceding his violence and abuse while managing to blame his victims as consenting participants in “mutually toxic relationships.”
“[There] is nothing mutual about a relationship where one person holds all the power and the other ends up bloodied and bruised.”
The feds also asked Subramanian to impose a $500,000 fine and included letters from six other individuals, in addition to Ventura’s. They noted that Ventura and the other woman who testified about being forced into “freak offs,” who testified under the pseudonym “Jane,” were not seeking restitution.
In a letter to the court from Ventura’s parents, they described seeing their daughter wither in her volatile relationship with Combs.
“None of the sexual acts were consensual as there is no consent in a domestic violence relationship. There was always the threat of violence. Everything she did with, for and
because of this defendant was self-preservation. She was, in actual fact, brutalized by the defendant’s power and depravity,” Regina and Rodrick Ventura wrote.
“To sentence lightly in this case that involved such vicious abuses of our daughters’ body, safety and dignity is to dismiss her very existence.”
Combs has asked the court for a term of no more than 14 months, effectively requesting time served, given he has been incarcerated for nearly 13 months following his September 2024 arrest.
They claimed he’s become a new man during his time at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center and wants to mentor abusers. Combs’ defense acknowledged his history of beating women at trial, arguing his history of domestic violence didn’t make him guilty of the crimes charged.
A skeptical Ventura on Tuesday wrote that she was disgusted at the implication Combs could serve as a mentor to abusers, noting he “flatly denied” her abuse allegations until he had no choice but to admit to them in the face of video footage.
“I know that who he was to me — the manipulator, the aggressor, the abuser, the trafficker — is who he is as a human,” she wrote. “He has no interest in changing or becoming better. He will always be the same cruel, power-hungry, manipulative man that he is.”
The rap mogul’s attorneys did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
This story will be updated.
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