The music mogul issued an apology only after some of singer Cassie Ventura’s allegations were substantiated by security footage from a Los Angeles hotel.
Thank God for hotel security cameras.
Last week, CNN obtained and broadcast footage of music mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs brutally assaulting a young woman in the hallway of a posh Los Angeles hotel in 2016.
As the video begins, a barefoot young woman is seen fleeing down a corridor toward elevators, stopping to hurriedly put on her shoes. Moments later, Combs emerges from a room wearing only socks and a white towel wrapped around his waist. He chases the woman down, throws her to the ground, kicks her, punches her, drags her by her hoodie and hurls a vase at her.
All while deftly managing to keep his towel in place.
The victim is R&B singer Cassie, whose real name is Casandra Ventura. In November, she filed a 35-page federal lawsuit against Combs and his label, Bad Boy Records, alleging that he had physically and sexually abused her for years and frequently forced her into encounters with male prostitutes that he watched and recorded.
The lawsuit, which left me feeling ill, lays out a disturbing narrative of extreme abuse, coerced drug use and sexual perversion over the course of the pair’s 13-year relationship, which began in 2005. When they met, she was a 19-year-old aspiring singer, while he was a 37-year-old rap icon and record label executive. He held her future in his hands, and she describes being trapped in a classic cycle of abuse.
For more than a decade after he signed Ventura to his label, the suit alleges, Combs orchestrated most aspects of her life, regularly hiding her away in hotels — she alleges one such three-week stay in Hawaii — so the black eyes and split lips he inflicted would heal.
Naturally, Combs’ attorney Ben Brafman feigned outrage at the idea that his client was an abuser:
“Mr.
