A final sexual assault witness testified on Thursday that agreeing to have sex with male escorts while Sean “Diddy” Combs watched and directed their actions opened up a “Pandora’s box” she could not close.
“It was just a door I was unable to shut,” said the witness, testifying under the pseudonym “Jane.”
“It was so much of it,” she said of the drug-fueled, dayslong sexual performances that she and Combs called “hotel nights.”
“It was too much of it,” she told the jury.
Jane is due to testify this week and next at Combs’ federal trial in Manhattan, with her testimony meant to bolster the two top charges of sex trafficking and racketeering.
Her testimony follows that of R&B singer and sex-trafficking witness Cassie Ventura, who said Combs coerced her into humiliating sex with male escorts in the 10 years ending in 2018. Former Combs employee “Mia” has also testified and said he sexually assaulted her at least four times between 2009 and 2017.
Jane is the millionaire music and lifestyle mogul’s last victim before his arrest, according to the indictment.
Prosecutors say Combs sex-trafficked Jane —meaning forced her to cross state lines to engage in sex with paid male escorts — between 2021 and 2024, the year he was arrested at the Park Hyatt, a Manhattan luxury hotel.
Inside Combs’ hotel room, investigators recovered bags of ketamine and ecstasy powder, a blue party light, and more than a dozen bottles of baby oil and sexual lubricants, a Department of Homeland Security investigator testified during the trial’s first week.
Prosecutors have previously described these items as the ingredients for freak offs, the dayslong sexual performances at the center of the sex trafficking case. Prosecutors have suggested that Jane will testify to having participated in Combs’ final freak off — or “hotel night,” as she called them — at that hotel.
On Thursday, Jane told the jury that she agreed to the first encounter in 2021 because she loved Combs and wanted to make him happy. She conceded on the stand that she felt “exhilarated” afterward.
Still, “I didn’t think that we would be doing that again,” she told the jury. “I figured it was something we did that one time, and maybe on a random night we might do it again.”
She said she soon realized that participating was the only way Combs would agree to have sex with her.
But when she would tell him she wanted to stop having the encounters, which jurors have also heard were called “freak offs” and “king nights,” Combs would abruptly brush her off.
“I could just feel the tension was building,” she said. Combs would tell her, “We don’t have to,” and “That’s fine,” she said, and then quickly changed the subject.
Ultimately, she said, “We would just do it” again.
Prosecutors have also said that Combs could be violent with Jane. In openings last month, they described Combs chasing her through the rooms of the house he paid for her to live in in Los Angeles, breaking down doors as she tried to escape.
Jane’s testimony may be key to proving not just sex trafficking, but racketeering as well. Racketeering requires proof that Combs, through his business empire, committed at least two underlying crimes.
Those potential underlying crimes include sex trafficking. They also include bribery and obstruction of justice, two crimes that prosecutors have alleged that Jane witnessed.
During her May 12 opening statements, Emily Johnson, an assistant US attorney, told the jury that Combs and his family members repeatedly reached out to Jane in an attempt to influence her testimony against him.
“You will hear him try to manipulate Jane into saying she wanted freak offs,” Johnson said in her opening, describing a recorded phone call she promised the jury would hear.
“You will hear him interrupt Jane when she pushes back,” the prosecutor added.
Prosecutors say Combs made sure that Jane would continue to receive housing payments from him after his arrest, something they may describe as a bribe.
Combs, 55, has pleaded not guilty to the indictment, through which he risks a maximum potential sentence of life in prison.
His lawyers have insisted that all sexual contact in the indictment was consensual, and they have described his business activities as legitimate and not constituting a criminal “racket.”
The trial may continue into early July, depending on the length of the defense case, which is expected to begin in mid-June.
This story has been updated with additional detail from Jane’s testimony.
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