Heavily pregnant Cassie Ventura tearfully gave a court harrowing details of alleged beatings and deviant sexual manipulation at the hands of fallen music mogul Sean 'Diddy' Combs.
Ventura, just two weeks from giving birth, took a deep breath as she carefully sat down in the witness box in a close-fitting brown bodysuit that showed off her large bump.
But star witness Ventura did not look his way on the second day of the blockbuster trial and appeared to avoid locking eyes in the tension-filled New York federal courtroom.
It is the first time she has been anywhere near Combs since the 2018 funeral of another of his exes, singer Kim Porter – mother of three of his children.
At times she dabbed her eyes with a tissue as tears welled up while giving evidence.
Asked about the violence in her 10-year relationship with the disgraced hip-hop titan, Billboard 100 singer Ventura said: 'He would bash me on the head, knock me over, drag me, kick me, stomp me in the head if I was down.
'I'd get knots in my forehead. Busted lips, swollen lips, swollen eyes… whites of eyes would be red. Bruises all over my body.'
Prosecutor Emily Anne Johnson asked 38-year-old Ventura: 'How frequently physical.' She replied: 'Too frequently.'
Her horrific testimony comes a day after the court heard how Harlem-born Combs, 55, forced women to take part in drug-fueled sex parties he dubbed 'freaks offs' and went on for days while he filmed them.
He has denied sex trafficking by force, racketeering conspiracy and prostitution for what prosecutors have said was a decades-long criminal enterprise in which 'he called himself the king'.
Ventura told the Manhattan court: 'Within the first year of our relationship Sean proposed to me this idea, this sexual encounter that he called voyeurism where he's watch me in sexual activity with a third party, specifically another man.
Sighing as she recounted in slow and halting speech, she added: 'It entails the hiring of an escort and setting up this experience so that I could perform for Sean.
'It involved Sean being able to watch me with the other person and actually direct us on what we were doing sexually.'
Ventura, who is expecting her third child with former personal trainer husband Alex Fine, said when Combs suggested the freak offs 'I remember my stomach falling to my butt.
'The nervousness and confusion on that moment. I had just turned 22. I didn't have a concept of how that would be a turn on, but I also felt a sense of responsibility with him sharing something like that with me.
'I was confused, nervous but also loved him very much and wanted to make him happy.'
Ventura, who was signed by Combs to his Bad Boy Records label as she began her singing career, said she agreed to a freak off.
More followed and 'pretty quickly I knew that it wasn't something I wanted to be doing. Especially as regularly as it became. But I was in love and wanted to make him happy.
'Got to the point I didn't feel I had much of a choice. I didn't really know what it could turn into.'
Sighing again, she said: 'At this point Sean controlled a lot of my life, career, the way I dressed, everything. And I didn't feel I had much say in it… being super young, naive, a total people pleaser.
'Over time it turned into the fact there was blackmail material to make me feel if i didn't do it, it would be hung over my head or these things would become public.
'It was always in the back of my mind I'd be hurt by him. Sean is a really polarizing person. Also very charming… I just didn't know what would happen.'
Ventura then bit her lip nervously as she agreed with prosecutor Johnson that any 'blackmail materials' would be photos and videos of the freak offs.
The singer, who gently rubbed her baby bump during testimony, told the court she first hooked up with Combs as a 19-year-old and signed a 10-album deal in 2006.
They began a relationship, but she was 'completely sexually inexperienced' and 'I didn't even have the vocabulary for some of the things we talked about.
But she wanted to be around him, telling the court: 'For the same reason as everyone else. Just this exciting, entertaining, fun guy that also happened to have my career in his hands. It felt special. Not a lot of people got that kind of time with him.
For a while Ventura said she soaked up the lifestyle.
'I really fell in love with him. We had fun. It was my first adult relationship, or I thought it was. It was so different to anything I can imagine. His lifestyle was much different than mine,' she told the court.
But then Combs allegedly started tightening his grip.
'I began to experience a different side of him,' Ventura recalled. 'His abusive side, very controlling over my life, the things I wanted to do. But there's still love there.
'Control was everything. From the way I looked to what I was working on that day, who I was speaking to. Control was an all-around thing to a certain point.'
Combs' moods 'varied depending on what was going on. It could change at the drop of a conversation, a bad conversation that I had nothing to do with.
'At certain times I knew it wasn't even about me…. the next thing I was getting hit in the face.
'If I wasn't smiling at him the way he wanted… I just looked a certain way he didn't like. Maybe I was a brat, or something, he would let me know I need to fix my face or watch my mouth.'
Ventura paused to regain herself, then continued: 'Psychological was every day, not know what he was going to be when he woke up that day…. that was a lot, someone constantly telling you who to be.'
She admitted being jealous of Combs's other women in an environment which she intimated she was too young to understand.
'I was insanely jealous,' she said. But also super young, I didn't get it all. I didn't get that he was him.
'As he would say, 'I'm Puff Daddy and Puff Daddy has many women, he like the company of women'. I had to learn that over time.'
Confusingly, Ventura added: 'He made me feel like we were in a monogamous relationship. He expected that of me, so I assumed that of him. He would say, I'm not dealing with anyone else, it's just us.'
The witness moved to Los Angeles where her career began to be 'stifled' around 2012, and she began a heavy partying lifestyle.
But also 'the freaks offs became a job where there was no space to do anything else but to recover and try to feel normal again.'
'The partying was 'staying up for days on end, taking drugs and other substances, drinking. Having sex with strangers for days.'
The freak offs 'ranged anywhere from 36, 48 to 72 hours. The longest one was four days, maybe even more than on and off breaks... a significant part of the week.'
Earlier, the court heard defense attorney Anna Estevao Ventura's reveal husband Alex Fine allegedly threatened to 'beat the f***' out of Combs in texts after she demanded $30million from him.
Fine, 32 – who turned up at the courtroom this morning – allegedly sent the message before his wife filed her civil lawsuit accusing him of rape and sexual assault that started the whole prosecution process.
Both sides agreed Fine had to leave the courtroom during her version of events when it reaches 2018.
Diddy trial live: Pregnant Cassie Ventura breaks cover as she prepares to take the stand
Combs was brought to court from the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn. He made a hand gesture to his three sons and three daughters who returned to the courtroom – despite walking out yesterday as prosecution witness revealed explicit details of their father's sexual encounters.
His 82-year-old mother Janice, who sat through graphic evidence about her son's harrowing alleged crimes yesterday, arrived later.
The fallen mogul was arrested in September last year after his mansions in Los Angeles and Miami were raided by federal authorities.
Also earlier, Diddy's defense attorney Marc Agnifilo brought into play the question over the freak off videos and photos, which are currently sealed.
He told Judge Arun Subramanian: 'There is no aspect to any of the videos that is not in the nature of adult pornography.
'That's what it is. It's people who are nude, who are having sex or about to have sex. It's all sexually explicit.
'Our application is that the visual images and the audio is within the purview of the sealing order. It's a privacy issue. It's not insignificant that this is in the nature of pornography.'
The judge said he could make the videos and photos public despite pleas from Ventura to keep them under wraps.
Prosecutor Johnson said that all the materials were 'entirely sexually explicit' and involved nudity.
She said that nobody planned to clear the courtroom during the evidence and that Cassie's lawyers had already objected to the material being public.
Evidence started with male escort Daniel Phillip resuming his testimony from the day one – and revealing how he lost his erection with Ventura after she'd suffered a violent confrontation with Combs at the Essex House hotel in New York City while he was with them.
He said Combs and Ventura went to a bedroom where there was screaming. The singer came out and jumped in his lap. 'She was shaking uncontrollably, obviously afraid,' he told the court.
'We started talking for a while before we ended up kissing.' The pair were 'moving' in the direction of sex, and he had an erection. But at that moment Combs walked in, and he lost it.
Phillip, 41, has alleged he was paid $6,000 each time to have orchestrated sex with Cassie as Combs watched.
Defense attorney Xavier Donaldson grilled the escort on his personal attraction to Ventura and suggested he might have been jealous of the rapper.
Phillip said he believed he had established a 'bond' with the singer but denied it was a relationship. 'I was attracted to her and had she given me the chance to date her, I absolutely would,' he told the court.
After the violence at the Essex, he said: 'I wanted to really help her but there was nothing I could do. I was completely shocked. She was afraid. I could see she was really afraid. I could see in her face she was crying a lot.
'She went to grab my shoulders, that's how we started, with an actual hug. I was just completely messed up; I could not engage.
