- In testimony Thursday, a former personal assistant said Combs repeatedly attacked her.
- Testifying as "Mia," she described four sex assaults, including waking to find Combs on top of her.
- Her head bowed, she spoke softly and broke into panicky gasps while describing her ordeal.
In emotional testimony on Thursday, a former personal assistant to Sean "Diddy" Combs said the rap mogul sexually assaulted her throughout her eight years working for him — including a rape that she said began while she slept in a staff bedroom.
Testifying under the pseudonym "Mia," the witness told the jury at Combs' Manhattan sex-trafficking and racketeering trial that he attacked her at his 40th birthday party at New York's Plaza Hotel, on his private jet, and twice at his Los Angeles mansion.
"It was very quick, but it felt like forever," she said between quiet, gasping sobs, describing being raped some 15 years ago at the millionaire rap tycoon's rented Beverly Hills mansion.
It was 2009 or 2010, she said, within a year of her hiring. She was in her mid-20s, and she awoke in her bunk bed to find Combs on top of her, telling her to "be quiet."
"I just froze. I didn't react," she told the eight men and four women on Combs' federal jury. "I was terrified, and confused, and ashamed, and —"
Here she gasped again before adding, "and scared."
Combs ran his business empire through intimidation and violence, and she felt powerless to say no — or even complain, she told the jury.
"I couldn't tell him 'no,' like, about a sandwich — I couldn't tell him 'no' about anything," Mia said, her voice breaking.
"Because then he would know that I thought what he was doing was wrong, and then I would be a target," she said, her head bowed.
Combs could ruin her future, she said.
"I knew his power and I knew his control over me," she told the jury, her voice hushed and halting. "And I didn't want to lose everything that I worked so hard for — or this, like, this world that was the only thing I had anymore."
Mia, who is scheduled to continue testifying Friday, is the second witness in three weeks to describe being sexually assaulted and beaten by Combs.
The first was Combs' longtime former girlfriend, R&B artist Cassie Ventura.
Prosecutors hope Ventura's testimony will prove Combs' sex-trafficking charge. It was often delivered in an even, steady monotone. She appeared strong and defiant at times.
In contrast, Mia's testimony — offered in support of the forced-labor element of Combs' racketeering charge — was delivered with continual raw emotion.
She described arriving in New York full of dreams after tying a mattress onto the top of her car and setting out from her native Virginia. She soon landed personal assistant jobs with fashion designer Georgina Chapman and actor Mike Myers.
Then she pursued the post as Combs' PA, sitting with a series of his top executives before being invited to meet him, his HR director, and one of his stylists for a final interview at his Manhattan apartment.
Combs answered his door in his underwear, she said.
Her first day on the job was nearly 24 hours long. She was paid $50,000, and once worked five days without sleep, she told the jury.
"Protect him at all times," she told jurors, reading from an email she once wrote, in which she described the job of being Combs' PA. "Stay attached to Blackberry 24/7."
A personal assistant's duties? "Everything from cracking his knuckles to doing his taxes to writing his next movie," she said, reading from the email.
She would rise to be director of acquisitions for Combs' movie company, Revolt Films, before leaving in 2017. "It was chaotic. It was toxic, it was exciting," she said of her tenure.
"The highs were really high, and the lows were really low."
Combs' 40th birthday
"I was very new," just months into the job, Mia said, describing the first time she alleged Combs assaulted her, at the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan.
Combs, now 55, had rented a downstairs floor and a penthouse. At one point in the evening he pulled Mia into the penthouse kitchen, she said, to compliment her on her work.
He asked her to drink two shots of vodka, to toast his birthday, and she soon felt like she was losing consciousness.
"I just remember I was standing against the wall and I remember he was talking and all of a sudden his face got closer and my eyes couldn't focus on his face because it was so close," she told the jury.
She said she remembered Combs' face leaning in for a kiss and his hand reaching up her dress — and then waking up at sunrise in a chair in the living room.
"I thought it would never happen again," she said. "I thought it was probably just a huge accident."
Describing another assault, now on a plane
Mia told the jury she was attacked again while working at the Los Angeles mansion.
She was on the floor of his bedroom closet, she said, "putting stuff in his bag."
When she looked up, she said, Combs was standing over her, exposed.
"Just like trash," she said, when prosecutor Madison Smyser asked how she felt after this, the third attack she described. "Like scared, and ashamed, and defeated — and like an idiot."
Mia's memory was hazy for the fourth attack she described. She told the jury it was on Combs' private jet during a long flight one night when everyone on the plane was asleep.
She said she got up to use the only bathroom, inside the plane's back bedroom, where Combs was sleeping.
"I remember when I opened the door, he was standing right there, and like, basically, he was trying to push me back inside," she said. "I don't remember what happened."
Combs is fighting a potential life-in-prison sentence, and has repeatedly insisted since his September arrest that the sex he's charged with was consensual. Throughout Mia's testimony, he spoke animatedly with his defense lawyers, frequently passing them hastily -scribbled Post-It notes.
Throughout the three weeks of testimony, Combs' defense lawyers have used their cross-examinations to question the credibility, financial motives, and memories of the prosecution's witnesses.
In an apparent attempt on Thursday to preempt this kind of attack, Mia was asked repeatedly why she stayed, and why she stayed quiet. Even in her first interviews with prosecutors, Mia had not mentioned that she had been sexually abused.
Mia said she was too ashamed and frightened to come forward. She said she'd seen what had happened to a personal assistant named Kayla, who had complained to the head of HR after witnessing Combs beating Ventura.
Kayla was immediately fired. Mia said Combs warned her that if Kayla filed a lawsuit, he'd make her take the stand and testify on his behalf.
"I thought I could just die with it," as a secret she told no one, Mia said.
Now, though, she realizes "I have a moral obligation," she said, breaking into a fresh round of quiet, gasping sobs. "Because when you are scared into silence, these things continue to happen to others."
If you are a survivor of sexual assault, you can call the National Sexual Assault Hotline (1-800-656-4673) or visit its website to receive confidential support.
