The defense team for Sean “Diddy” Combs broke new ground on Tuesday in their ongoing efforts to humanize his unorthodox appetites — this time by asking one of his accusers to describe her “research” into the fetish of cuckolding.
“I just wanted to know why my partner wanted so many of these nights, and what was driving him,” the accuser, “Jane,” testified when asked by one of Combs’ lawyers to describe her research.
“I would use the word ‘cuck’ for him,” she said her research led her to conclude.
Jane, who is using a pseudonym, is the second ex-girlfriend and sex-trafficking accuser to testify against Combs at his federal trial in Manhattan. She spent Tuesday under a cross-examination that is due to continue on Wednesday and Thursday.
Like the trial’s first sex-trafficking accuser, R&B artist Cassie Ventura, Jane told the jury that Combs used violence, false promises, and drugs to coerce her into dayslong sessions of sex with male escorts.
During these marathon sessions — Ventura called them “freak offs,” Jane called them “hotel nights” — Combs would masturbate, make recordings, and give detailed instructions, like, “more baby oil,” both women testified.
Both Ventura and Jane described complying with these 72-hour threesomes — sometimes more men would be involved — out of love, and financial and emotional dependency. Both said Combs met their protests with scorn and insults, and with threats to withhold his affection and cash.
Both described harrowing violence at Combs’ hands. Ventura was beaten to the point of injury by Combs more than a dozen times in their on-and-off decadelong relationship, according to multiple witnesses, contemporaneous text messages, and photographs of her bruised face and body.
“Is this coercion?” Jane testified that Combs taunted her last year, after a beating that covered her face with bruises. She said he then demanded she hide her welts and black eye with makeup, pop an ecstasy pill, and have sex with an escort, telling her, “you’re not going to ruin my fucking night.”
Part of the defense strategy has been to portray the millionaire music and lifestyle mogul sympathetically, as a business genius who has struggled with mental health issues, drug addiction, and anger.
Since the May 12 opening statements, his attorneys have made a point of calling him “Sean,” instead of the other names they said he’s otherwise known as, such as “Diddy” and “Puff.” They have repeatedly asked prosecution witnesses to describe his generosity, including on Jane’s first day of cross-examination.
For two years, Combs has paid the $10,000 monthly rent on Jane’s 5,300 square foot Los Angeles-area home, she testified Tuesday. He also invested $20,000 in her dress design business, she said.
“I would assume that it would be close to that,” Jane responded when defense lawyer Teny Geragos asked if it were true that Combs had wired her a total of $150,000 in the three years they dated, between 2021 and 2024.
Jane being asked to describe her research into “cuckoldry” may be part of a challenging effort to humanize and normalize Combs and his appetites.
His lawyers made a point during the cross-examination of his former assistants to highlight Combs’ penchant for putting applesauce on his cheeseburgers.
Freak offs or hotel nights. which the defense calls consensual, may be presented by the defense as a similar, though more extreme, example of a personal preference — a “lifestyle,” as Geragos lightly called it on Tuesday.
Geragos pressed Jane for a detailed description of her research into cuckoldry, repeatedly asking, “what else?” and “what were some of the other things” Jane had learned.
Only after Jane used the word “bi-curiosity” did the line of questioning end, and the defense lawyer move on.
“Cucks could also have a bi-curiosity that they were too ashamed to experience themselves,” Jane said her research showed her.
“So they use the woman to venture out into this curiosity — without venturing out into this activity themselves,” she added.
Prosecutors have shown these sex performances in a much darker light than as merely part of an exploration of a “curiosity” or a “lifestyle,” calling them coercive and humiliating, as have Ventura and Jane.
“I just felt like it was all I was good for to him,” testified Ventura. She told jurors that freak offs would leave the walls, couches, and carpets of the hotel suites that Combs rented soiled with baby oil, lubricant, candle wax, blood, and urine.
“I just felt pretty horrible about myself,” she told jurors. “I felt disgusting.”