Lawyers for Sean Combs cross-examined a former girlfriend at his federal trial on Tuesday, highlighting her feelings of affection for the music mogul and the agency she had in their relationship in an effort to counter prosecutors’ narrative of a romance curdled by intimidation and coercion.
The woman, Jane, who is appearing in court under a pseudonym to protect her privacy, said that she “felt very loved by him” at times despite their often tumultuous three-year relationship.
Jane said she cherished her time cuddling and watching “Dateline” on television with Mr. Combs. She comforted him with foot rubs and bathed him. “He was my baby,” Jane said.
Over the last three days, during questioning from prosecutors, Jane described taking part in what she called “hotel nights”: drug-fueled sex marathons with hired male escorts, which she said she did not want to engage in, and led to problems like frequent urinary tract infections.
Mr. Combs, the music producer and impresario also known as Puff Daddy and Diddy, is charged with sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy. The government has accused him of running a “criminal enterprise” whose objectives included coercing women into sex and covering it up; after Casandra Ventura, the singer known as Cassie, who testified over four days last month, Jane is the second woman put forward by prosecutors as a victim of sex trafficking.
Mr. Combs has denied the charges, and the defense has argued that Jane and Ms. Ventura were willing participants in sex acts with Mr. Combs.
Under questioning from Teny Geragos, a lawyer for Mr. Combs, Jane said she was eager to please Mr. Combs, and that she felt their hotel nights satisfied him. She said she accepted that Mr. Combs filmed these encounters, and said she would seek his approval in performing certain sex acts “to turn him on.”
“Do you feel that you were the only person who knew what he truly liked sexually?” Ms. Geragos asked Jane.
“Yes,” Jane responded.
At times on Tuesday, Jane offered starkly contrasting testimony about the same events she had spoken about in previous testimony, reflecting a relationship that she has described as both loving and manipulative.
Last week, under questioning from prosecutors, Jane described a hotel night in Turks and Caicos that included four rounds of sex over 24 hours with a hired escort named Paul. It left her “extremely sore” and in tears, Jane said.
In the cross-examination, however, the defense played an audio message that Mr. Combs sent Jane after that trip, which also included two stops in Miami; hotel nights took place at each location. On the recording, Mr. Combs gave Jane the nickname “crack pipe.” Jane explained the name on Tuesday, saying it was because Mr. Combs was addicted “to my sex.” Smiling, Jane recalled she had “so much fun” with Mr. Combs on the trip.
Sitting with his lawyers as he listened to Jane’s testimony, Mr. Combs nodded and bounced lightly in his seat.
Ms. Geragos noted that at each of the three stops on that trip, “entertainers” — Jane and Mr. Combs’s term for hired escorts — were present. “Unfortunately, yes,” Jane said.
The defense focused on times when Jane herself reached out to male pornography actors to involve them in the sex nights. She testified that she did so in an attempt to seize some level of control in the unwanted pattern of sex that came to dominate their relationship.
“My choices were made under a lot of emotional pressure due to my relationship with him,” she said.
Jane said that she and Mr. Combs would jokingly use the names of basketball stars to refer to their encounters with one regular escort. She was Kobe Bryant, Mr. Combs was Michael Jordan and an escort named Paul was Shaquille O’Neal — they called themselves “the trifecta,” she said.
Jane said she sought to understand Mr. Combs’s interest in watching her have sex with other men. “I just wanted to know why my partner wanted so many of these nights and what was driving him.”
In her research, Jane came upon the word “cuck,” which is short for cuckold — she defined it as referring to a man who watches his female partner having sex with another man. Mr. Combs, she said, often used the words voyeurism or escapism to describe his interest; “I would use the word cuck for him more so,” Jane said.
She also said she found in her research that sometimes, cucks “have a bi-curiosity that they’re too ashamed to experience themselves.”
On the stand Tuesday, Jane said that from the start of their relationship, Mr. Combs was upfront about seeing other women, describing himself as “polyamorous.”
One romantic rival that caused friction in Jane’s relationship with Mr. Combs was Caresha Brownlee, a rapper known as Yung Miami. While Jane’s time with Mr. Combs was private, she said, his relationship with Ms. Brownlee was public and widely documented on social media.
“That was hard to watch,” Jane said, adding that she felt there was an “imbalance” in how much more attention Mr. Combs gave Ms. Brownlee.
Jane also said there was an “expectation” in their relationship that she would participate in hotel nights and help set them up: “I picked up on that fairly quickly, and I would make these arrangements because the undertone was an expectation.”
Asked if she ultimately wanted to break up with Mr. Combs, Jane replied, “Of course not.”
In her time on the witness stand, Jane has recounted vivid details of a troubled relationship with Mr. Combs, which began in 2021 and continued until shortly before Mr. Combs’s arrest in September 2024.
Under questioning from prosecutors, Jane said she was pressured to have sex with escorts without condoms. She once threw up in the bathroom of a luxury hotel after having sex with two men, she testified; after Mr. Combs told her “let’s go,” because a third man was waiting to have sex with her, she complied.
Jane was part of Mr. Combs’s life during the critical period after Ms. Ventura filed her bombshell lawsuit in November 2023, in which Ms. Ventura described being coerced into sexual encounters she called “freak-offs.” Recognizing a similar pattern to hotel nights, Jane texted Mr. Combs three days after that suit was filed: “I feel like I’m reading my own sexual trauma. It makes me sick how three solid pages, word for word, is exactly my experiences and my anguish.”
Jane was also staying at Mr. Combs’s Miami-area mansion in May 2024 when CNN broadcast a leaked hotel security video showing Mr. Combs assaulting Ms. Ventura, and witnessed the mogul and his team preparing an apologetic response.
Even while testifying against him, Jane retains strong ties to Mr. Combs. He is paying her legal expenses as well as the $10,000-a-month rent on her home in Los Angeles.
At the start of her testimony on Tuesday, Jane was asked by Ms. Geragos whether Mr. Combs has ever attempted to interfere with her lawyer’s representation of her.
“No,” Jane answered.
Olivia Bensimon contributed reporting.
