One day after filing an explosive lawsuit against him, Cassie has reached a settlement with Sean “Diddy” Combs that will keep her allegations of rape and sex-trafficking out of a courtroom.
The singer, whose full name is Casandra Ventura, had accused Combs, the Bad Boy music mogul and her former partner, of subjecting her to years of abuse during their relationship in a complaint filed Thursday in federal District Court in Manhattan. Combs had denied the allegations through his attorney.
In a surprising move late Friday, the two announced the case was over before any proceedings could begin.
“I have decided to resolve this matter amicably on terms that I have some level of control,” said Cassie, 37, in a statement. “I want to thank my family, fans and lawyers for their unwavering support.”
“We have decided to resolve this matter amicably,” said Combs, 54. “I wish Cassie and her family all the best. Love.”
No details of the settlement were announced. The one certainty is that it avoids a potentially nasty legal battle from unfolding in public.
Here’s a brief recap of what happened in an eventful 24 hours.
Who is Cassie?
Ventura is a singer, model and actress who met Combs in late 2005/early 2006. She was 19 and he was 37, already a successful musician and the head of his own influential record label, Bad Boy Records. He signed the teenager and, in 2006, she charted with the singles “Me & U” and “Long Way 2 Go.”
By 2007, Combs had split from his then-partner, Kim Porter (who died in 2018), with whom he shares four children, and he and Ventura reportedly coupled up. The two appeared to confirm their relationship in a 2012 public appearance.
While they never announced an engagement, speculation swirled after he posted an image of a diamond ring in 2014 that she was later spotted wearing. In August 2016, TMZ reported that Cassie and Diddy had a fight in Beverly Hills after she tried to break up with him — her mom purportedly called the cops — which led to rumors they had split. However, a source subsequently told Us Weekly that they remained a couple.
But in October 2018, her representative said in a statement to the magazine that Ventura and Combs were “indeed no longer together and haven’t been for months.”
What were Cassie’s allegations against Combs?
As noted by legal affairs journalist Meghann Cuniff, who posted the entire lawsuit on X (formerly known as Twitter), Cassie’s claims were so shocking that the documents included a trigger warning about “highly graphic information of a sexual nature.”
Ventura claimed that Combs, who has also gone by the nicknames Puff Daddy and P. Diddy, controlled, abused and sexually trafficked her. She said he gave her drugs and would both beat her and force her to have sex with other men while he filmed the encounters. In addition, she alleged that he raped her at her home, after having forced his way in, in 2018.
This began several years after they met in 2005, according to the lawsuit. He introduced her to “a lifestyle of excessive alcohol and substance abuse and required her to procure illicit prescriptions to satisfy his own addictions,” then “forced Ms. Ventura to engage in sex acts with male sex workers while masturbating and filming the encounters.”
He was “prone to uncontrollable rage” throughout their relationship and “frequently beat Ms. Ventura savagely,” the suit had alleged. “These beatings were witnessed by Mr. Combs’s staff and employees of Bad Boy Entertainment and Mr. Combs’s related businesses, but no one dared to speak up against their frightening and ferocious boss.”
Ventura released a statement upon filing her suit: “After years in silence and darkness, I am finally ready to tell my story, and to speak up on behalf of myself and for the benefit of other women who face violence and abuse in their relationships.”
Her lawyer said that the “I’ll Be Missing You” rapper tried to pay off his client rather than deal with the lawsuit.
“Mr. Combs offered Ms. Ventura eight figures to silence her and prevent the filing of this lawsuit,” her attorney Doug Wigdor told Deadline. “She rejected his efforts and decided to give a voice to all woman who suffer in silence. Ms. Ventura should be applauded for her bravery.”
And what did Kid Cudi have to do with all this?
Ventura alleged in her lawsuit that while she was dating the “Day ‘n’ Nite” rapper in 2012, Diddy said he would blow up Cudi’s car. According to the lawsuit, the car “exploded in his driveway” around that time.
A spokesman for Cudi confirmed the story to the New York Times: “This is all true.”
The lawsuit said further that Combs “hit her several times, and then kicked her in the back as she tried to run out the door” when he found emails the two had exchanged.
What did Diddy say?
The rap mogul’s lawyer Benjamin Brafman quickly denied Ventura’s allegations. He contended that his client was actually the victim in the situation — of extortion.
“For the past 6 months, Mr. Combs, has been subjected to Ms. Ventura’s persistent demand of $30 million, under the threat of writing a damaging book about their relationship, which was unequivocally rejected as blatant blackmail,” Brafman said, per the Hollywood Reporter. “Despite withdrawing her initial threat, Ms. Ventura has now resorted to filing a lawsuit riddled with baseless and outrageous lies, aiming to tarnish Mr. Combs’s reputation and seeking a pay day.”
How strong was her case?
Attorney Judie Saunders, a former prosecutor who leads the sex abuse department at ASK LLP, told Yahoo Entertainment before the case was settled that “the allegations do carry weight.”
She pointed to the lawsuit being filed under New York’s Adult Survivors Act, which allows people who say they experienced sexual assault to take legal action even though the statute of limitations has expired. That law expires next week.
“I would say that the fact that this young lady knew that this may be the last time that she has to speak out because of this closing window … very much falls in line with [other] survivors,” said Saunders, who supports eliminating such statutes of limitations altogether. “The humiliation and the shame. They don’t want to speak out, they don’t want to say anything. And it does take bravery in light of that one, just in general to speak out against sexual violence, but then to speak to … a powerful individual about these sexual allegations.”
Saunders said cases like this often come down to who the public believes, because no one else knows what went on in a private setting. Who can get to the press first? Here, though, there are incidents that happened in front of others, which Saunders believed would have strengthened the case against the music icon.
The attorney also noted that if the case had gone to trial, both Ventura and Combs would have leveled personal attacks in the courtroom. “If the attorneys take what I see as a trend to be more aggressive and to go after the accuser, they definitely have the resources to dig up dirt, if there’s any,” Saunders said, “and to really intimidate, legally intimidate, publicly intimidate and engage their PR machines to intimidate these accusers.”
In the end, however, the case was closed, and the former couple will look to move on with their separate lives without the prospect of a courtroom showdown.
