Cassie Ventura's attorney issues statement after 'Diddy' verdict
The 38-year-old 'Me & U' singer — who was heavily pregnant when she testified for four days about her ex-boyfriend's abuse and the drug-fueled 'freak-offs' to which she was subjected — spoke out through her attorney Douglas Wigdor.
'This entire criminal process started when our client Cassie Ventura had the courage to file her civil complaint in November 2023,' Wigdor said in a statement to the New York Daily News. 'Although the jury did not find Combs guilty of sex trafficking Cassie beyond a reasonable doubt, she paved the way for a jury to find him guilty of transportation to engage in prostitution. By coming forward with her experience, Cassie has left an indelible mark on both the entertainment industry and the fight for justice.'
Wigdor reiterated the legal team's faith in Ventura, praising her 'exemplary courage throughout this trial.'
'She displayed unquestionable strength and brought attention to the realities of powerful men in our orbit and the misconduct that has persisted for decades without repercussion,' he continued. 'This case proved that change is long overdue, and we will continue to fight on behalf of survivors.'
In November 2023, Ventura filed a bombshell lawsuit accusing the Bad Boy Records founder, 55, of rape, sex trafficking and abuse during their on-and-off relationship, which lasted from 2007 until 2018. They settled for $20 million the following day, with dozens of similar lawsuits filed since.
The Harlem-born mogul's physical abuse of Ventura was confirmed in May 2024, when CNN published harrowing security footage of Combs beating her in a hotel hallway in early 2016. Combs subsequently admitted to and apologized for the attack, unedited video of which was released at his trial.
Combs was convicted on two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution, each of which carries a maximum 10-year prison sentence. He faced life behind bars if convicted on the more serious racketeering conspiracy and sex trafficking charges.
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USA Today
4 hours ago
- USA Today
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My friends and I had never seen anything like it so fully pervade the culture, certainly not from someone we felt we could relate to. I have not admired Combs for decades now, since well before his trial this year. But I will always be partial to the Puff Daddy of the '90s: from 1993, when he founded his record label, Bad Boy Entertainment, through the spectacular rise and death of the Notorious B.I.G., and peaking around 1998 during hip-hop's 'shiny-suit era,' which he pioneered with Ma$e and the Lox. By the time I got to college, Puffy was even wealthier, and my cultural references had begun to change. I vaguely remember the preposterous images of him strolling beneath a blazing Mediterranean sun while his valet spread a parasol over his head. He was mainly in the news because of a shooting at Club New York, which resulted in bribery and gun-possession charges against him and a highly publicized trial (he was acquitted). For my friends and me, his shocking newness had begun to fade. 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The second quality was his ability to make Black people and Black culture—even its less compromising, more street-inflected iteration—feel at home in places, such as the Hamptons, that had not previously welcomed them. Puffy's motto 'I'ma make you love me' felt innocent and aspirational to us, not least because he actually achieved it. We were still many years away from realizing just what he would do with all the love he was given. Helen Lewis: The non-exoneration of Diddy Puff Daddy seemed to us then like a Black man utterly free in a moment of expanding opportunity. Before the age of social media, before we'd ever stepped on a plane, Puffy represented our first intimation of an unrestricted way of being-for-self in the world. On the one hand, he was the antidote to the soul-crushing squareness of upwardly mobile middle-class life that we so feared—degrees, office jobs, bills. On the other hand, he was perfectly assimilated into the good life of the American mainstream, to which we desperately craved access. This made him dramatically unlike his peers. Tupac and Biggie were confrontational, and look where it got them. Rap entrepreneurs such as Master P and Brian 'Baby' Williams were rich but ghettoized; any number of establishments wouldn't seat them. Puffy, by contrast, looked like a marvelous solution to the problem of success and authenticity that my friends and I had been struggling to solve. Yet we were suffering from a kind of myopia. And it wasn't unique to us. The generation after us put their faith in Kanye West, whose most recent contribution to the culture is a single titled 'Heil Hitler.' Role models are like seasons. One passes irretrievably into the next, but for a moment they might reveal possibilities that outlast and surpass them.
