SOURCE :- THE AGE NEWS
WARNING: This article contains graphic detail that may distress some readers.
New York: The rapper, producer and music executive Sean “Diddy” Combs called himself “the king”, a court heard on the first day of his much anticipated sex-trafficking trial – “and he expected to be treated like one”.
According to prosecutors, this extended to a disturbingly violent, sadistic and long-running pattern of coercing women into having sex with male escorts while he watched and recorded videos, and then used those tapes to blackmail the women into staying with him and remaining silent.
By contrast, defence lawyers painted a picture of a brilliant but deeply flawed man with a love for sex and drugs and a propensity for jealous rage. But he was not guilty of racketeering or trafficking women for sex, they told the jury, and the women had acted freely and of their own volition.
The criminal trial of Combs – also known as Diddy, Puff Daddy and P. Diddy – is one of the most anticipated cases to come before a New York courtroom. Television networks were camped outside the Daniel Patrick Moynihan Courthouse in downtown Manhattan from the early hours of Monday, some having paid $US500 ($776) for someone else to wait in line. Inside, journalists from around the world filled the overflow rooms.
What they heard from prosecutor Emily Johnson in her opening statement was an extraordinary story of 20 years of alleged crimes spanning sex trafficking, racketeering, forced labour, bribery and arson. Combs was said to have used his music business and employees to indulge his penchant for sex parties in hotel rooms – which he called “freak-offs” or “wild king nights” – that involved paid escorts, sexual abuse, drugs and, often, violence.
Sean Diddy Combs, centre, motions a heart sign to his family in attendance as he is escorted out of lock-up by US Marshals, on the first day of his trial in New York.Credit: AP
“To the public, he was Puff Daddy or Diddy, a cultural icon, a businessman,” Johnson said. “But there was another side to him. A side that ran a criminal enterprise.”
Throughout the morning’s statements, Combs sat at the defence bench surrounded by his legal team. He seemed in good spirits, smiling before proceedings began. The 55-year-old, who now sports grey hair, wore a light grey sweater and beige pants, and occasionally donned a pair of thick-rimmed reading glasses to review paperwork. Photographers are not allowed inside the courtroom.
The jury was told much of the evidence in the expected eight-week trial would involve two women, Cassie and Jane.
Cassie is Combs’ former girlfriend Cassandra Ventura, an R&B singer and dancer who filed a lawsuit against him in 2023 that was settled out of court. Jane became involved with Combs in 2020, the court heard, and remained so until less than a year ago.
Diddy performing in London in November 2023.Credit: Getty Images for Sean Diddy Combs
Johnson began by telling the jury of a night in which Combs, in a jealous rage, grabbed his gun and woke up an employee so they could locate and “kill” a man Cassie had been spending time with. They broke into a house but could not find them. Later, when they found Cassie, Combs “beat her brutally, kicking her in the back and flinging her around like a rag doll”.
“This was just one night in the defendant’s two decades of crimes. This was just the tip of the iceberg,” the court was told.
Combs made impossible demands of his staff, Johnson said, and when he didn’t get what he wanted from the people around him, he threw things, yelled and pressured them to take drugs. Employees were tasked with setting up his hotel rooms before the “freak-offs”, including lighting, extra linen and lubricant. Staff were on hand to supply cash for escorts and drugs as required.
Once inside, Combs “directed every step of the sex”, Johnson told the jury, including the women’s lingerie, tall platform heels and manicured white nails. They were forced to take drugs, typically MDMA (ecstasy), while Combs masturbated or participated directly, and often recorded video. Johnson said these parties lasted days and happened so regularly that Cassie routinely spent days each week high in a dark hotel room.
During one such occasion, Combs allegedly forced a male escort to urinate in her mouth. He was liable to get angry and beat her if she left the event early, or even took too long in the bathroom, Johnson told the jury.
“He told her he could destroy her career” by releasing the tapes. Both adults were involved, Johnson said, “but only one of them had the power, only one of them had control”.
The court heard Combs met Jane, a single mother, in 2020, and she fell in love with him and eventually agreed to try a hotel room encounter with another man. On one occasion, after vomiting following sex with an escort, Jane wanted to leave, but Combs is alleged to have ordered her to “hurry up and get back into the room”, where another escort was waiting.
Johnson said on one night less than a year ago, Combs went to Jane’s home and an argument ensued. She tried to hide in several rooms and closets, but he kicked the doors down, then punched her in the face, kicked her on the ground and dragged her by the hair. “You’re not going to f— up my night,” he told her, according to Johnson’s opening statement.
Prosecutors also alleged Combs and his associates attempted to pay off security guards with a bag containing $US100,000 ($157,000) in cash, to prevent the circulation of footage showing him beating Cassie at a Los Angeles hotel in 2016. That video aired on US news channel CNN last year, and Combs – who had initially denied assaulting Cassie – then admitted to his “inexcusable” behaviour.
Johnson told the jury they would see evidence that implicated Combs’ employees – bodyguards, chiefs of staff and other senior employees – in enabling his actions and covering them up.
One of Combs’ defence lawyers, Teny Geragos, opened by telling the jury her client was a “complicated man”, but the case itself was simple. This was a matter of adults making free choices in the context of at-times toxic but consenting sexual relationships, she said. “The government is trying to turn those relationships into a racketeering case, a sex-trafficking case, and it will not work.”
The defence portrayed Combs as a man who built groundbreaking businesses out of nothing and created “music that changed a generation”. He was charismatic and magnetic, Geragos said – a “larger than life” figure whom people wanted to be around because it would benefit them, too. They didn’t always love what he did or how he behaved, but they “loved him”, she told the jury.
Janice Combs, mother of Sean “Diddy” Combs, centre right, arrives at the courthouse in New York.Credit: AP
Geragos said the defence would not shy away from the things Combs did, but they would defend him against things he did not do. He had a rotten temper and “sometimes gets so angry or so jealous that he gets out of control”. He had committed domestic violence, but that wasn’t what he was charged with. His sexual life was a bit different, “but you are not here to judge him for his sexual preferences”. And while the jury may think he was a jerk, “he’s not charged with being a jerk, he’s not charged with being mean”.
Moreover, the defence cast doubt on the motives of the women who will testify in the coming days and weeks. They were not victims but strong, capable women who “made free choices every day for years”, Geragos said. “They were all getting something each of them wanted from him.”
The defence said the fights between Combs and Cassie, or Combs and Jane, were grounded in jealousy or drugs. That jealousy was on full display in the CNN video, Geragos said. Combs’ behaviour was “indefensible, horrible and dehumanising … it’s virtually every bad word you can think of”. But they were fighting over a phone and infidelity, not because of sex-trafficking, the defence argued.
“[Cassie] made a choice every single day to stay with him, a choice to fight for him,” Geragos said. She said Cassie only ended the relationship in 2018 after 11 years when, at the funeral of his ex-girlfriend Kim Porter, Combs described Porter as his soulmate. Cassie then realised “she was never going to be the love of his life”, Geragos told the jury.
Likewise, Combs’ defence team argued that Jane went along willingly with the rapper’s sexual fantasies. She wanted alone time with him and for their relationship to progress. “She wanted more than anything to make him happy,” Geragos said.
“You may think to yourself, ‘Wow, he’s a really bad boyfriend’… [But] being a willing participant in your own sex life is not sex trafficking.”
The defence also alleged the two women were motivated by money, especially after Cassie’s 2023 lawsuit, and queried why they didn’t go to the police at the time. “They went to a civil lawyer for a money-grab – demands for unbelievable amounts of money,” Geragos told the jury.
The trial continued with evidence from a former security guard, Israel Florez, who worked at the InterContinental Hotel in Los Angeles on the night the video was filmed showing Combs assaulting Cassie..
More to come
This grab taken from hotel security camera video and aired by CNN appears to show Sean “Diddy” Combs attacking singer Cassie in a Los Angeles hotel hallway in March 2016.Credit: AP
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