By bizn_fun 
‘I was controlled like a puppet’: Cassie tells judge she fears for safety in emotional letter
Earlier this week, prosecutors filed several letters addressing Judge Arun Subramanian, including alleged victims of Sean Combs and others who gave evidence in court.
Among these is a letter from singer Cassie Ventura Fine, who dated the rapper on and off from 2007 to 2018, and gave evidence over four days in court.
Combs’s lawyers admitted from the start of the trial that he had been violent in the past, but said this did not make him guilty of sex-trafficking or racketeering conspiracy – and he was indeed cleared of these charges.
Remember, this means that while jurors believed he broke the law over his use of sex workers, they did not find the sexual encounters involving Cassie and “Jane” were non-consensual, which is what prosecutors argued.
Combs has continuously and strenuously denied any allegations of sexual abuse.
Recounting trauma
During Cassie’s cross-examination, his defence team presented sexually explicit messages between the former couple, with some showing her expressing apparent enthusiasm about the “freak off” sex sessions with escorts she alleges she was forced into.
“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,” Cassie writes in her letter.
“I testified that from age 19, Sean Combs used violence, threats, substances, and control over my career to trap me in over a decade of abuse.”
‘Groomed’
She goes on to repeat the testimony she gave in court, alleging Combs “groomed” her into performing repeated sex acts with hired male sex workers, during multi-day “freak offs”, which she said occurred almost weekly.
She says she was controlled “like a puppet” and that these sexual encounters were “degrading and disgusting”.
She also highlights the CCTV footage that was shown in court, which was first made public in 2024, of Combs attacking her in a hotel hallway after she tried to leave a freak off in 2016.
“People watched this footage dozens of times, seeing my body thrown to the ground, my hands over my head, curled into a foetal position to shield me from the worst blows,” Cassie says in her letter.
Fear of revenge
She also writes about having fears for her safety, saying: “My worries that Sean Combs or his associates will come after me and my family is my reality. I have in fact moved my family out of the New York area and am 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.”
She describes Combs as “the manipulator” and “aggressor” and says of the verdict: “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.”
Letter from Cassie’s parents
Cassie’s “extremely concerned” parents, Regina and Rodrick Ventura, also submitted a letter to the court, saying their daughter’s “horrific nightmare” lasted 11 years.
“None of the sexual acts were consensual as there is no consent in a domestic violence relationship,” they allege. “Everything she did with, for and because of this defendant was self-preservation.”
They urge Judge Subramanian to “deliver a sentence that appropriately reflects the severity and depravity of the abuse, the breach of trust, and the suffering that our daughter experienced”.