“Sex acts became my full-time job, used as the only way to stay in [Combs’s] good graces,” Ventura wrote. “I regularly worried that displeasing him meant putting my family and friends’ safety at risk…. The horrors I endured drove me to have thoughts of suicide—ones I almost followed through on, if not for my family’s intervention and urging that I seek professional care.”
If Combs does not serve time in prison, Ventura wrote, she fears that “his first actions will be swift retribution towards me and others who spoke up about his abuse at trial.… I remain very much afraid of what he is capable of and the malice he undoubtedly harbors towards me for having the bravery to tell the truth.”
A hotel security video of Combs violently beating Ventura was one of the many key pieces of evidence against the rapper at his trial; even Combs’s lead attorney, Marc Agnifilo, said during the closing remarks that there was no debate as to whether Combs physically abused Ventura. “We own the domestic violence,” Agnifilo said.
While Combs’s defense team argued that Combs has changed since assaulting and abusing Ventura and additional alleged victims, Ventura is determined to remind Judge Subramanian what Combs is capable of.
“He will always be the same cruel, power-hungry, manipulative man that he is,” she wrote in the letter. “I hope that your sentencing decision reflects the strength it took for victims of Sean Combs to come forward. I hope that your decision considers the many lives that Sean Combs has upended with his abuse and control.” Vanity Fair has reached out to a representative for Combs for comment on the letter.
Rumors have swirled that President Donald Trump might waive Combs’s jail time entirely if he is sentenced to additional incarceration, although Combs’s legal team has offered differing statements on the path to a pardon. (Combs attorney Nicole Westmoreland recently told CNN that the team has “reached out and had conversations in reference to a pardon,” while Agnifilo told CBS News that he has “nothing to do with a possible pardon.”)
During her closing remarks, Assistant US Attorney for the Southern District of New York Maurene Comey claimed that Combs “never thought that the women he abused would have the courage to speak out loud what he had done to them.” Ventura has now made herself heard—as have prosecutors who say they want Combs to serve 11 years in prison.
