How did we get here?
Before the Brooklyn jail cell, before the federal indictment, before the raids, there was a civil lawsuit — disturbing claims brought to federal court by one of Diddy's ex-girlfriends, the model and R&B singer Casandra Ventura, also known as Cassie.
Cassie's allegations were explosive. She accused Diddy of repeated physical abuse over more than a decade. She accused him of forcing her to have sex with male sex workers while he masturbated and filmed them. She accused him of raping her in September 2018, near the end of their relationship.
The claims drew wide attention and inspired a larger reckoning with Diddy's behavior. The suit itself was only the start of a series of pivotal events.
In the last few years, following the November 2023 filing of Cassie's suit, Diddy has faced a wave of other civil lawsuits accusing him of rape and other sexual abuse. Then came a sweeping federal probe, raids on the hip-hop icon's homes in Los Angeles and Miami Beach, and the indictment at the center of the upcoming trial.
Cassie is not named in the indictment against Diddy. The initial version referred only to a "Victim-1," whose accusations closely mirrored those of the model and singer.
Diddy and Cassie settled her lawsuit in one day, without disclosing the terms of the agreement — and with Diddy denying any wrongdoing. He has denied all civil and criminal claims via his attorneys.
Cassie's suit alleged that not long after she met Diddy in 2005, when she was 19 and he was 37, he signed her to his record label and asserted complete control on her personal and professional life, including by plying her with drugs. Throughout their relationship, Diddy "was prone to uncontrollable rage" and would frequently beat her "savagely," it said. His staff and the employees of his various businesses witnessed the beatings, but none dared to speak up against him.
Cassie said in the document that she was a victim of sex trafficking because Diddy forced her to have sex with male sex workers — encounters he called freak offs, she said — in multiple jurisdictions, including at high-end hotels and his homes. Her suit said she was given alcohol in excessive amounts and "copious amounts of drugs" before and during the freak offs, which she took because "they allowed her to disassociate during these horrific encounters."
It remains to be seen whether Cassie will be called to the witness stand. If she is, her testimony could prove to be the dramatic centerpiece of the entire trial.
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