Sean Combs sex trafficking trial updates: Cassie's testimony ends after days of describing abuse

Combs' lawyers were expected to begin cross-examining Cassie on Thursday, when they will get the chance to challenge her credibility or poke holes in her account of what happened.

She testified Wednesday that Sean "Diddy" Combs raped her when she ended their decade-long relationship, after he locked her in a life of physical abuse by threatening to release degrading sexual videos of her.

Addressing the Manhattan courtroom for a second day in Combs' federal sex trafficking trial, Cassie said Combs forced his way into her Los Angeles apartment and raped her on the living room floor after she said she was breaking up with him.

After the jury was sent home for the day on Wednesday, lawyers squabbled over ground rules for the cross-examination of Cassie, which is set to begin at 9:30 a.m. EDT Thursday.

Combs attorney Marc Agnifilo said infidelity would be the featured subject of the questioning that is expected to stretch until day's end Friday.

"We have worn our defense on our sleeves since the first bail hearing," Agnifilo said. "Everybody knows we are going to bring up infidelity and text messages of infidelity."

Eyewitness News team and ABC News legal analyst Channa Lloyd break down a dramatic day of testimony from Cassie Ventura, and the cross-examination to follow.

In 2023 Cassie Ventura went to rehab and trauma therapy. She described losing her will to live and her contemplation of suicide.

"I was spinning out and I didn't want to be alive anymore at that point," she testified, breaking down as she recounted how "I couldn't take the pain I was in anymore."

She said she "tried to walk out the front door into traffic" but, holding a tissue to her eye, she added "my husband would not let me."

She wrote the chapters of a book, "putting everything on paper for the first time so I could really understand what I had been through over many years."

She wanted Combs to read it because she said she "wanted him to recognize the pain he put me through." Combs listened to this with his chin resting on his hand, elbow on the table.

"He brought the concept to me when I was 22," she said, speaking of "freak offs." "And it never stopped." Through tears Ventura said "I was always so numb because that's what I chose to get through it." She said she participated in "hundreds" of "freak offs" during her relationship with Combs, and none since.

She said she offered Combs the rights to her book for $30 million, a figure she said she picked at random "that would alert him." She received no money.

She filed a civil lawsuit in November 2023 that settled the next day for $20 million, the first time the settlement detail has been publicly revealed.

Asked why she agreed to testify, Ventura said "I can't carry this anymore. I can't carry the shame, the guilt, the way I was guided to treat people like they were disposable. What's right is right, what's wrong is wrong. I'm here to do the right thing."

Court has adjourned for the day and cross-examination will begin on Thursday.

Darla Miles details another day of shocking testimony from Cassie Ventura, and looks ahead at the cross-examination set to begin Thursday.

Cassie Ventura testified she also saw Sean Combs inflict violence on others, beyond her own experiences.

Ventura alleged that Combs dangled a friend of hers, known as Bana, over a balcony at Ventura's 17th floor apartment off Wilshire Blvd in Los Angeles.

"I saw him bring her back over the railing of the balcony and then throw her onto the patio furniture," Ventura testified.

Ventura's 2023 civil lawsuit described the same incident. Federal prosecutors included it in the racketeering conspiracy charge Combs faces. The civil suit was settled with no admission of wrongdoing by Combs.

"On one occasion, Combs dangled a female victim over an apartment balcony," the indictment alleges.

Ventura's testimony is not linear but makes clear that she alleges that over the nearly 11-year relationship, the alleged violence, sex and the drugs took a toll, leaving her experiencing what she told the court were "PTSD episodes."

Kemberly Richardson has more on Cassie Ventura's testimony.

The second-to-last time Ventura saw Combs, in 2018, she testified that "He raped me in my living room."

Ventura testified that she and Combs had been out to dinner but after he brought her home, his demeanor changed.

"The laughing and other things happening before that were not there. It was like someone taking something from you," Ventura told the court.

The alleged rape occurred on the floor, Ventura told the jury.

"I just remember crying and saying no but it was very fast," she testified. "I don't know if he noticed."

Ventura testified that she saw Combs one more time after that, and that she agreed to the meeting because she felt they were "still very connected."

"I didn't hate him," Ventura told the jury.

After that encounter, Ventura testified, there were some communications between her and Combs but she hadn't seen him in more than six years, she said, until she walked into court to testify against him this week.