Cassie Ventura broke her silence on social media Thursday, saying the domestic violence she suffered “broke me down to someone I never thought I would become.”
Singer Cassie Ventura, the ex-girlfriend of Sean “Diddy” Combs who was seen in the harrowing footage being assaulted by the rapper in a hotel hallway, is breaking her silence.
Ventura took to social media Thursday, saying the domestic violence she suffered “broke me down to someone I never thought I would become.”
Ventura’s statement comes six days after hotel surveillance footage showing Combs, who was wearing only a towel, grabbing Ventura by her neck and throwing her to the ground. The video footage, which was taken in 2016, also shows Combs kicking her and dragging her down the hallway of a Los Angeles luxury hotel.
“I am better today, but I will always be recovering from my past,” Ventura wrote. She asked that everyone “open your heart to believing victims the first time. It takes a lot of heart to tell the truth out of a situation that you were powerless in.”
Ventura met Combs when she was 19 years old. He was 37. Their relationship lasted 11 years.
Combs apologized for the hotel violence.
“My behavior on that video is inexcusable,” Combs said in a video posted to social media.
Another Combs accuser, model Crystal McKinney, who won MTV’s “Model Mission” beauty pageant show in 1998 when she was 17, said she met Combs during fashion week in New York in 2003. According to her lawsuit, Combs forced her to perform oral sex on him.
McKinney said she lost consciousness and awoke to find herself in a taxicab and realized that she had been sexually assaulted by Combs. The model says it was so traumatic that two decades later, she still has the “unwashed clothing from that night in her closet where they remain in plastic wrap.”
McKinney’s lawsuit is the sixth sexual assault lawsuit Combs is facing. Combs did not respond to Inside Edition's request for comment on the lawsuit, but he has previously denied all wrongdoing.
