Second accuser of Sean 'Diddy' Combs takes the stand, alleges sexual assault

NEW YORK — Sean “Diddy” Combs was accused of raping his former assistant and subjecting her to brutal working conditions as prosecutors beefed up their Manhattan federal court case against the disgraced rap mogul on Thursday.

Testifying under the pseudonym “Mia,” the woman said she worked for Combs from 2009 through 2017, first as his personal assistant and then for his media company Revolt Films. She told prosecutor Madison Smyser that Combs sexually assaulted her multiple times in “sporadic” attacks.

The first time, she said, was in 2009, just a few months into her employment, at his 40th birthday blowout at The Plaza hotel in Manhattan, which Vanity Fair reported on stars like Bono, Jimmy Fallon, and Christy Turlington attending.

During the night, Mia said Combs plied her with shots, and she became heavily intoxicated, more so than felt normal. She recalled him at one point forcibly kissing her and putting his hand up her dress and then “coming to” the next morning on a chair in the penthouse with a foggy memory.

Mia said she initially gave Combs the benefit of the doubt, putting the disturbing encounter down to his drinking, but that he would mess with her again. Describing an encounter at Combs’ home in Beverly Grove, Los Angeles, she recalled waking up in the night to “the weight of a person on top of me.” It was Combs, “telling me ‘shh, be quiet.’”

Mia, who became emotionally distraught discussing the assault, said Combs then awkwardly used his hands to “put himself inside of me” and rape her. Struggling to speak, she went on to describe another encounter in which Combs forced her to perform oral sex on him.

“Like trash,” Mia said when asked how the latter incident made her feel. “Scared and ashamed. Like an idiot.”

The former assistant, who recounted several more sexual assaults in graphic detail, said she had frequently been the target of Combs’ violence. She said reporting the incidents wasn’t an option in the pre-#MeToo era and that she was scared to tell him no, with his constant threats leaving her paralyzed with fear about being retaliated against and blacklisted in the industry.

“I didn’t want to die or get hurt,” Mia said. “I just thought I would be punished.”

Mia said her job working for Combs was hellish and all-consuming, with her longest shift, fueled by Adderall, lasting for five days. She said Combs hired her on a base salary of $50,000 and that when she turned up for her job interview, he opened the door wearing nothing but underwear.

In one exhibit pulled up in court, Mia described some of her job responsibilities in 2011 as “anticipating his needs, whims, and moods,” maintaining his professional and personal routines from when he woke until he fell asleep at night, and anything from “cracking his knuckles to writing his next movie to doing his taxes.”

Getting cursed out, berated, having her intelligence questioned by the Bad Boy Records co-founder and being treated “like a worthless piece of crap” was par for the course, the witness said. While working as his live-in assistant, the jury heard she couldn’t leave his properties without permission or lock her bedroom door, even off the clock.

Mia recalled Combs sending his security guards to find her in 2009 or 2010 when she went out after he’d gone to bed one night, “desperate” to see some friends.

“I didn’t realize I wasn’t allowed to leave,” she said.

“Puff’s mood” determined the atmosphere, Mia said, and was impossible to predict. She recalled one instance where he didn’t want her to leave the room, and when she finally spoke up to say she desperately needed to change her tampon as there was blood running down her leg, he became furious and threw a bowl of spaghetti at her. The jury heard that she would escape, stay in a hotel, and later be suspended.

On another occasion, in 2011 or 2012, Mia said simple Wi-fi connection issues were the source of Combs flying into a fit of rage, recalling him throwing a computer at her and screaming, “I don’t care if you have to call Bill Gates.”

Following Casandra “Cassie” Ventura, Mia is the second of three alleged victims the jury is slated to hear from in the feds’ sweeping case against Combs. Manhattan federal court Judge Arun Subramanian ordered court artists and members of the public not to sketch her likeness in any way. A third woman, Jane, also a pseudonym, is yet to testify about allegedly being forced into demoralizing sex acts with strangers.

The Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office alleges that from 2004 to 2024, when he was teetering on the edge of billionaire status and considered among the most influential forces in hip-hop, Combs was running a criminal enterprise operated by a network of staff who engaged in sex trafficking, forced labor, bribery, obstruction of justice, kidnapping, and arson.

Combs, 55, has pleaded not guilty to sex trafficking, racketeering conspiracy, transporting individuals for prostitution, and related offenses and could be sentenced to life in prison if convicted.

Ventura spent four days on the stand during the first week of testimony, describing violent beatings and being coerced into debasing sexual performances with male performers that Combs dubbed “freak-offs.”

She said she never wanted to participate in the sessions and that Combs hung videos of the humiliating encounters over her head as blackmail in testimony backed up by Combs and Ventura’s former stylist, Deonte Nash, on Wednesday.

Mia said on Thursday that she and Ventura were as close as sisters, but she never confided in her about the sexual assaults.

“I thought I could just die with it — the most shameful thing of my life,” she said.

She said she considered Ventura’s relationship with Combs toxic and “inequal,” with Combs lording over his much younger girlfriend’s career and appearance. Mia recalled seeing Combs being viciously violent with Ventura “all the time,” including cracking open her head, giving her black eyes, fat lips, and digging his nails into her arm, and constantly monitoring her whereabouts.

In addition to a host of other incidents and details about Combs’ lifestyle and copious drug use, Mia corroborated testimony jurors heard from Ventura and Nash about a particularly savage beating that left Ventura gushing blood from her head, a wound that Combs would send her to a plastic surgeon for. Mia and Nash said they tried jumping on Combs to get him to stop.

“His eyes turned black,” she said. “I was trying to get him to stop. It was like he was looking through me.”

The trial continues Friday.

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