On this op-ed, Mags Lesiak, a criminologist specializing in home violence, takes on criticism of Cassie Ventura after her testimony within the Sean “Diddy” Combs trial.

When Casandra Ventura was 19, she met 37-year-old Sean “Diddy” Combs, a music mogul who appeared to supply her “unprecedented avenues for fulfillment,” in accordance to court docket filings. Combs signed Ventura, who goes by Cassie professionally, to his label, Unhealthy Boy Data, in 2006, and her debut album was launched later that 12 months, court docket filings point out. Someday inside that interval, Ventura and Combs turned romantically concerned, making Combs her employer, her label head, her skilled future, and her boyfriend. According to several court documents and now to testimony, together with Ventura’s personal, in Combs’s intercourse trafficking trial, it was the start of a nightmare.

Ventura is one in every of dozens of people who’ve accused Combs of sexual assault. In truth, as well as to the continued federal prison case, greater than 70 civil lawsuits have been filed in opposition to him, with a lot of accusers claiming they had been drugged earlier than being raped or assaulted. (Ventura filed a civil lawsuit in opposition to Combs in 2023 that was rapidly settled.) Combs has repeatedly denied all allegations in opposition to him and pleaded not responsible to all fees in his federal intercourse trafficking trial. He might face 15 years to life in jail if convicted. Ventura, nevertheless, served because the star witness within the prison trial in opposition to Combs, detailing the alleged horrors she confronted throughout their relationship. As many ladies making accusations in opposition to highly effective males have skilled, this testimony has subjected Ventura to a bunch of questions — together with criticism for staying in an allegedly abusive relationship.

However to me, it’s clear that this isn’t a narrative about unhealthy decisions. It’s a narrative about survival in a world that too usually errors coercion for consent.

I’m a psychological criminologist and doctoral researcher on the College of Cambridge who makes a speciality of coercive management, trauma bonding, and the way cultural norms form younger girls’s emotional vulnerability in relationships. I’ve studied relationships that contain abuse, as Ventura’s allegedly did. Although there may be love concerned, usually what seems from the surface to be love or consent is a technique for survival on the sufferer’s half.

In her testimony throughout Combs’s prison trial, Ventura described falling in love with him, saying she believed his “actual character” to be “candy, attentive.” This aligns with what I’ve seen in my work by way of what number of perpetrators set up a connection. They usually love-bomb, and flatter, constructing belief by affection and phantasm. As soon as the sufferer is emotionally connected, the tone begins to shift. Isolation begins. Management tightens. Autonomy erodes. The baseline of being in love can weaken somebody’s boundaries, as can energy. Combs had each.

When abuse begins, victims usually adapt, one thing I additionally observed in Ventura’s testimony. She testified that the alleged “freak offs” — drug-fueled intercourse encounters that she stated he usually filmed — “disgusted” and “humiliated” her. When requested why she agreed to take part, Ventura stated, “I needed to make him completely happy.”

From what I’ve seen in my analysis on survivors, what could seem outwardly as consent from victims may be an try to survive or to appease an abuser. Each “alternative” turns into strategic: hold the perpetrator calm, keep fascinating, keep away from triggering potential punishment. And in instances the place there’s additionally an intense energy imbalance professionally or in any other case, the survivor could have even fewer choices — if leaving includes the potential of each bodily violence in addition to profession and monetary break, what alternative is it actually?