Sean “Diddy” Combs’ ex told a federal jury Monday that the mogul once covered her face in bruises before posing a taunting question: “Is this coercion?”
The rap mogul then demanded she put on makeup, pop an ecstasy pill, and have sex with a male escort, the woman, “Jane,” testified, describing a June 2024 dinner date at her Los Angeles home.
“Take this fucking pill. You’re not going to ruin my fucking night,” Jane, who is testifying under a pseudonym, said Combs demanded as she screamed, “I don’t want to! I don’t want to!”
Through this harrowing testimony, Jane became the second of Combs’ ex-girlfriends, after R&B star Cassie Ventura, to take the stand at his Manhattan trial and describe being sex trafficked through coercive violence.
“He just looked at me, right in my face,” from an inch away, his voice “forceful,” Jane said, when lead prosecutor Maurene Comey asked her to describe how Combs appeared and sounded when he asked her, “Is this coercion?”
It was the third day of testimony for Jane, who described herself as an OnlyFans lingerie model and the single mother of a child fathered by one of Combs’ rap world rivals. She dated Combs between 2021 and 2024.
Jane told the jury Monday that while she took the ecstasy pill on that violent night, she did not answer Combs’ question about coercion.
Instead, only three months later, federal prosecutors would answer the question for her.
Combs would be indicted in September 2024 on racketeering and sex trafficking.
Jane Rosenberg/REUTERS
Both Ventura and Jane were sex trafficked by means of Combs’ false promises, violence, and coercion, according to the indictment. The legal definition of coercion includes any scheme or pattern that causes someone to fear serious harm.
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Defense lawyers argue that there was no coercion because the sex was consensual. They say that this is borne out by years of texts and emails in which Ventura and Jane display enthusiasm for these drug-fueled nights of sex with as many as three men, plus Combs himself.
The racketeering allegations against Combs include bribery and witness tampering, and here Jane’s testimony from Monday could also help prosecutors.
Jane told the jury that in the days after Ventura filed her explosive November 2023 lawsuit, Combs threatened to send her sex tapes to the father of her child, offered her cash, and pleaded, “I need your friendship.”
“Charge me. Charge me, so we can just move on,” Jane testified that a desperate-sounding Combs told her during a FaceTime call.
“He was wanting me to come up with some sort of number,” Jane told the jury, describing what she called a rejected offer to pay for her silence.
The Ventura lawsuit quickly upended Combs’ life and his multimillion-dollar music and lifestyle empire.
In it, Ventura accused Combs of forcing her to have sex with male escorts while he watched, masturbated, and filmed. These so-called “freak off” performances involved heavy drug use and lasted for days, Ventura said in the suit, previewing her own testimony at the start of the trial.
The lawsuit, which settled the next day for $20 million, was the catalyst for dozens of similar lawsuits and for the indictment itself.
“I just reacted, like, I can’t believe I’m reading my own story,” Jane told the jury Monday, tearfully describing her reaction to reading Ventura’s lawsuit for the first time.
“I almost fainted,” she told the jury. “In fact, I think I did.”
Combs’ reaction to the lawsuit was more extreme than Jane’s own, veering, in her description to the jury, from anger to accusation to fear.
Before Ventura’s lawsuit, Combs would react with scolding denials when she told him she wanted to stop what she called “hotel nights” and to enjoy romantic dinners and trips instead.
“You’re tripping,” he would tell her, according to the texts shown in court. “Please, woman,” and “You’re fucking crazy,” he’d tell her. “So, we’re breaking up?” he’d threaten.
But in the days after the Ventura lawsuit, Jane couldn’t bring up “hotel nights” without Combs asking if she was out to get him.
“You trying to set me up?” he asked her in one November 2024 phone call that was recorded by Combs, later recovered from the phone of his chief of staff, Kristina Khorram, and played Monday for the jury.
“You recording my phone calls?” he demanded. Jane testified she was not — and that she had no idea that Combs was the one making a recording.
In one of two recorded calls, Combs attempted to spin their nights together as “Just some kinky shit that I thought that we, you know, we both enjoyed.”
When Jane answers, “I just want you to know that’s not how I saw things,” Combs asks again, “Are you recording me?”
Jane’s cross-examination is set to begin on Tuesday and may last through Thursday.
