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A former personal assistant for Sean Combs took the witness stand Thursday and told jurors the Bad Boy Records founder worked her around the clock and physically and sexually assaulted in “traumatizing” attacks she had planned to take to her grave.
The woman, using the pseudonym Mia, often broke down in tears as she described working for Combs from 2009 to 2017. She said he was a manipulative and mercurial boss who might treat her as a best friend one day then hurl a computer at her head during a tantrum over his internet connection the next. She claimed Combs repeatedly slammed her arm with a heavy door in 2012 after he snatched her phone and she tried to get it back. She recalled once jumping on Combs’ back to stop a violent assault, saying she was thrown off into a wall. She never went to police, she confirmed.
“I made a lot of excuses for him in my head,” she told jurors. “I believed Puff’s authority was above the police.”
Mia sobbed as she described the multiple sexual assaults at the hands of Combs. She said the first time was when Combs was praising her work ethic in a hotel penthouse kitchen while celebrating his 40th birthday. He poured her two shots of vodka, which Mia said “hit” her harder than what was typical of two shots. Suddenly, Combs was leaning in for a kiss and he put his hand up her dress, leaving her mortified.
“I was shocked and I froze. I didn’t process what was happening,” Mia said. Her next memory was waking up in another room on a chair, later convincing herself Combs was drunk and that “it was probably a huge accident,” she testified. But then it happened again, she said.
Mia said in 2009 or 2010, Combs snuck into her room and climbed on top of her while she was sleeping in a staff bed at his Los Angeles mansion. She wasn’t allowed to lock her door and woke up to “the weight of a person on top of me,” she said. Combs told her to be quiet and “put himself inside of me,” she reportedly testified. “I just froze, I didn’t react,” she said. “It was very quick, but it felt like forever.”
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She said another time, she was in Combs’ closet, packing a bag, when he allegedly ambushed her and forced her into a sex act. She said the alleged assaults left her “terrified, confused, ashamed and scared,” but she felt trapped.
There were several other sexual assaults, Mia claimed, always sporadic and random. Mia said she blocked many of them out, only able to recall a “dark horrible feeling” in her stomach surrounding certain incidents. Mia spoke about a private jet flight with Combs, who allegedly pushed her back into a bathroom while she tried to dissuade him by saying others were on the plane. “It didn’t work,” she said, noting that’s all she could remember before her memory went blank.
She was terrified and believed that if she spoke up, Combs would crush her. She said human resources was “only around if [Combs] wanted to punish you.”
“I couldn’t tell him no. I couldn’t tell him no, even about a sandwich. There was no way I could tell him no, [because] then he would know I thought that what he was doing was wrong, and I would be a target,” she said. “He would fire me and ruin my future and somehow twist the story into making me look like a threat,” she testified.
She promised herself she would bury the trauma. “I was going to die with this. I didn’t want anyone to know ever,” she told jurors. “This is the most traumatizing thing that’s happened to me.”
Mia was identified as Victim-4 in the Southern District of New York’s criminal indictment against Combs, with her allegations tied to the racketeering charge against the music mogul. (Combs has pleaded not guilty to the five felony counts against him.)
Mia told jurors she got the job with Combs after moving to New York and first working for fashion designer Georgina Chapman and later as an assistant to actor Mike Myers. She said Combs greeted her in his underwear for her first interview and that she worked 24 hours straight her first day. She once worked five days straight without sleeping, relying on Adderall to keep going, she testified. Part of her job included high-level development at Revolt Films, but she also had to clean up “nightmare” messes in hotel rooms after Combs’ “freak-offs.” She said the rooms would be littered with broken glass, candle wax, menstrual blood, and baby oil on the walls.
She wasn’t allowed to leave Combs’ residence without his permission, even if he was sleeping, she said. At a moment’s notice, he might ask her to crack his knuckles, write a film, or do his taxes, she testified.
“I had a physical breakdown. My hearing went; it felt like I was underwater, my equilibrium was off, blurred vision, out of nowhere I was hysterical and could not stop crying,” she testified, according to NBC News. “At that point, Puff said [I] could go to sleep.”
Mia said Combs would flip between treating her like a best friend a work “partner,” promising her executive roles at his companies, to making her feel worthless and threatening to take away her production credits.
Mia said her tenure overlapped with Combs’ relationship with singer Casandra “Cassie” Ventura, one of the women Combs is accused of sex-trafficking. She told jurors Combs closely controlled Ventura’s whereabouts, appearance, and career, and that part of her job was to “keep tabs” on Ventura. When she and Ventura, who became like a “sister,” did something without Combs’ permission, the punishment could be “unpredictable” and “terrifying,” she testified.
She claimed that she saw Combs chase Ventura, slam her to the ground, and “crack her head open.” She said Ventura did not fight back. “I’ve just seen her with her arms up,” she testified.
Mia recalled one incident in August 2013 when Combs appeared at Ventura’s apartment and allegedly turned violent. Echoing prior testimony from Ventura and celebrity stylist Deonte Nash, Mia said she jumped on Combs’ back to stop him. “I thought he was going to kill him,” she said, referring to Combs and Nash. She claimed Combs threw her against a wall. “His eyes turned black, there was no getting through. It was the first time I realized the severe danger we were actually in,” she testified.
In prior testimony, Ventura and Nash told jurors that Combs shoved Ventura into her bed frame that day, causing a deep gash in her eyebrow that required stitches. Ventura’s head “started gushing blood,” Mia testified Thursday. When Combs ordered Mia to call a plastic surgeon and report that Ventura injured herself while “drunk,” Mia complied, she said. “I thought that was the only way to get her help,” she testified.
Mia also recounted a scary encounter during a trip to Turks and Caicos with Combs and Ventura. She told jurors she woke up to Ventura racing into her room, begging for help. “You gotta help me, he’s going to kill me,” Ventura pleaded, according to Mia. The women ran down to the beach and took off into the water on paddle boards, she testified, leaving an allegedly irate Combs pacing and screaming on the sand. She recalled the weather taking a dramatic turn and fearing that a storm was coming. “I was trying to weigh if it was scarier to face Mother Nature or Puff,” she testified.
According to prosecutors, Combs wielded his vast wealth and “multi-faceted business empire” to fulfill his sexual desires with crimes including physical assault, threats, forced labor, kidnapping, arson, bribery and obstruction of justice. He allegedly forced his sleep-deprived employees to do his bidding by subjecting them to physical force and threats of financial and reputational harm.
Prosecutors claim Combs worked Mia “to the bone” and sexually assaulted her. “The defendant forced himself on her sexually, putting his hand up her dress, unzipping his pants and forcing her to perform oral sex, and sneaking into her bed to penetrate her against her will,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Emily A. Johnson said during opening statements.
Mia is one of two witnesses who the court is allowing to use a pseudonym after she declared that testifying about “extremely sensitive” details under her real name would result in “humiliating and retraumatizing publicity.” Mia’s lawyers also noted she was fearful of reprisal and harassment from Combs and his supporters. On Thursday, she clasped her hands and looked at the ground when she entered and exited the courtroom. Arriving with a group of women, all wearing shades of pink, Mia was clearly nervous and often answered questions with a wavering voice.
Before Mia’s testimony, not much was known about the employee, although her name was mentioned a handful of times during testimony from Ventura. The women were friends, Ventura said, hanging out socially, with Mia spending a week in South Africa with Ventura while she filmed a movie in 2015.
During her four days on the witness stand, Ventura testified that Mia was physically present on several occasions when Combs attacked her, including the alleged beating in August 2013. A few years earlier, during Grammy weekend in 2010, Ventura said she and Mia fled a party at Prince’s home that they attended without Combs’ permission. Combs suddenly turned up, and Ventura “could tell he was angry” by his facial expressions, she testified. “I caught a glimpse of him, so I ran out as fast as I could to the front yard,” Ventura said, adding that Mia left the house with her.
“It’s a little fuzzy, but the most distinct memory I have is running and falling into the bushes in the front yard,” Ventura added. “I don’t know if, at that point, he was over me. I have no idea. I just remember falling in the bushes and then getting up quickly and getting in the car to get back to the hotel.”
Back at Ventura’s hotel, Combs barged inside the room and beat Ventura, leaving her with a black eye, knots in her head, and a busted lisp, Ventura and her friend, celebrity makeup artist Mylah Morales, testified.
Testifying Thursday, Mia said she was suspended from work after attending the Prince party with Ventura. “Puff said I was being insubordinate,” she told jurors. Mia also claimed Prince’s security “swiftly intervened” when Combs allegedly got physical with Ventura outside the party.
The government has already established that several of Combs’ employees and people on his payroll saw the mogul physically abusing Ventura over the course of their relationship. Former assistants George Kaplan and Capricorn Clark, Bad Boy artist Dawn Richard, Morales and Nash all testified they had been present when Combs brutally attacked Ventura.
Mia is the fourth former personal assistant to testify against her former boss. Her testimony is expected to mirror that of Kaplan, David James, and Clark’s who all claimed they worked around the clock for Combs and were expected to be available at any second.
Clark alleged that she averaged between two and four hours of sleep a night while working as Combs’ assistant in 2004 and 2006. During a three-month period, Clark said she was owed $80,000 in overtime pay. When Combs was presented with the paperwork, he ripped it up, Clark testified.
In her own opening address, Combs’ attorney, Teny Geragos, told jurors to consider Mia’s motive. “What are the reasons she is saying what she might be saying now, what she never said before?” Geragos questioned. “And certainly never said when she first started cooperating with the government?”
However, prosecutors stated that Mia took years to “grapple” with her experience. “Mia will tell you how she could not talk about what happened to her until recently, how she wanted to take the secret of what the defendant did to her to her grave,” prosecutor Emily A. Johnson said.
From Rolling Stone US
