A bombshell lawsuit, and a mogul in handcuffs
Fists pounding on a Los Angeles apartment door broke the silence early one morning in September 2016.
Bryana Bongolan, who was visiting her friend, the singer Casandra Ventura, who goes by the stage name Cassie, later said in court papers that she recognized the unhinged voice of Ms. Ventura’s boyfriend, Sean Combs.
Ms. Ventura, who occupied the fashionable 17th-floor apartment, remained in her bedroom. But Ms. Bongolan said she quickly told a third friend to lock herself in the bathroom.
According to the account Ms. Bongolan, an artist and designer, gave in an ongoing lawsuit she filed last year, Mr. Combs soon entered the apartment and found Ms. Bongolan on the balcony. Shouting profanities, he began groping her breasts, the court papers say, then scooped her up by her armpits — she said she is 4 foot 11 and under 100 pounds — and dangled her over the balcony’s banister, “with only Combs’ grip keeping her from falling to her death.”
When Ms. Ventura emerged from her bedroom, screaming at Mr. Combs to stop, he pulled Ms. Bongolan back from the brink — only to slam her body onto a patio table, Ms. Bongolan said in her account, causing unspecified injuries.
After Ms. Bongolan’s suit was filed, representatives of Mr. Combs said he denied her allegations, and said they would “ultimately be proven baseless.”
By this time, Mr. Combs’s music career was stagnant. But brand diversification had made him richer than ever: In 2017, Forbes named Mr. Combs the wealthiest artist in hip-hop, worth an estimated $820 million.
Yet his predilection for violence, as an uncontrolled impulse or a manipulative tool, was far from in check, according to court papers. In their indictment, prosecutors said this behavior extended to Mr. Combs’s employees, alleging that he made use of various people in his entourage “to carry out, facilitate, and cover up his acts of violence, abuse, and commercial sex.”
The investigation that led to the indictment was triggered by a bombshell lawsuit that Ms. Ventura filed in November 2023.
In wrenching detail, Mr. Ventura alleged years of violence and sexual abuse, including “freak-offs”: drug-fueled episodes of coerced sex. Her suit was settled in just one day, with what Mr. Combs’s lawyers have said included an eight-figure payment to her (though no admission of wrongdoing).
One episode in Ms. Ventura’s complaint came just six months before the dangling incident alleged in Ms. Bongolan’s lawsuit.
Ms. Ventura and Mr. Combs were at an InterContinental Hotel in Los Angeles, where, she said, a “freak-off” was underway. According to Ms. Ventura’s court papers, an intoxicated Mr. Combs punched her in the face, then followed her into the hotel hallway, where he yelled at her, grabbed her and threw glass vases at her.
Overhead, a security camera was recording.
Last May, CNN broadcast excerpts from that security footage, showing Mr. Combs beating, kicking and dragging Ms. Ventura in the hallway, while wearing only a towel. Two days later, a chastened Mr. Combs apologized, calling his behavior “inexcusable” and saying he took “full responsibility” for it.
By then, two of Mr. Combs’s homes had been raided by heavily armed federal agents, in scenes that were captured on live television. A lawyer for Mr. Combs complained of “a gross overuse of military-style force,” and a certain degree of sympathy for Mr. Combs and his family began to ripple through social media.
But the hotel video, showing in undeniable terms that Mr. Combs had brutally beaten Ms. Ventura, changed everything. Even Mr. Combs’s lawyers have admitted, in court papers, that the video “immediately and dramatically turned the tide of public opinion” against him.
