In the Name of Love and Violence: Cassie Ventura’s Courageous Stand By Taina Bien-Aimé
In the Name of Love and Violence: Cassie Ventura’s Courageous Stand By Taina Bien-Aimé
Combs started grooming Ventura when she was 19 years old, and he, 38. He introduced her to opioids and oral sex, she claimed, and the promise of a successful music career.
He mixed extraordinary access to exclusive celebrity parties, red carpet appearances, and private jets with unrelenting violence and consistent threats of exposing the pornographic videos he produced during the freak-offs, which Ventura characterized as “blackmail materials.”
Ventura disappointed herself in going back again and again to the abuse, but “I would do absolutely everything he wanted me to do,” she testified, and reiterated how deeply in love she was with Combs.
When asked why she sent so many texts to Combs initiating freak-offs, she responded: “I did my job.” She later described herself as Combs’ “sex worker,” a statement the judge asked the jury to strike from the record. Combs, in other words, acted as her pimp.
While we don’t know the extent or nature of Ventura’s vulnerabilities that Combs abused, Dr. Raghavan highlights how cultural expectations can exacerbate the risks of coercive control used by abusers and traffickers.
For example, Ventura came of age in the early aughts, a period Sophie Gilbert, author of Girl on Girl, describes as regressive corporate glamorization of misogyny in popular culture, especially in reality TV and hip-hop. In this environment, Ventura would have absorbed the message that women’s self-objectification and sexual submission to men are synonymous with empowerment…”
Read more: https://medium.com/@CATWIntl/in-the-name-of-love-and-violence-cassie-venturas-courageous-stand-ed319b121129
nordicmodelnow
May 30 2025, 10:32 AM #1“… Dr. Chitra Raghavan, a clinical psychologist who conducts research on coercive control and the exploitation of power imbalances in intimate partner abuse, sexual assault, and sex trafficking, offers a framework for understanding victims’ behaviors that might otherwise seem incomprehensible. In coercive control and trauma bonding, there is no negotiation, and resistance is met with retaliation and orders of submission.
Combs started grooming Ventura when she was 19 years old, and he, 38. He introduced her to opioids and oral sex, she claimed, and the promise of a successful music career.
He mixed extraordinary access to exclusive celebrity parties, red carpet appearances, and private jets with unrelenting violence and consistent threats of exposing the pornographic videos he produced during the freak-offs, which Ventura characterized as “blackmail materials.”
Ventura disappointed herself in going back again and again to the abuse, but “I would do absolutely everything he wanted me to do,” she testified, and reiterated how deeply in love she was with Combs.
When asked why she sent so many texts to Combs initiating freak-offs, she responded: “I did my job.” She later described herself as Combs’ “sex worker,” a statement the judge asked the jury to strike from the record. Combs, in other words, acted as her pimp.
While we don’t know the extent or nature of Ventura’s vulnerabilities that Combs abused, Dr. Raghavan highlights how cultural expectations can exacerbate the risks of coercive control used by abusers and traffickers.
For example, Ventura came of age in the early aughts, a period Sophie Gilbert, author of Girl on Girl, describes as regressive corporate glamorization of misogyny in popular culture, especially in reality TV and hip-hop. In this environment, Ventura would have absorbed the message that women’s self-objectification and sexual submission to men are synonymous with empowerment…”
Read more: https://medium.com/@CATWIntl/in-the-name-of-love-and-violence-cassie-venturas-courageous-stand-ed319b121129