If you haven’t seen the video yet, please trust me that you don’t need to watch it. Last week, CNN released surveillance footage of an attack by Sean Combs, the rapper and producer, against his ex-partner, the singer Cassie Ventura, at a Los Angeles hotel in 2016. In the footage, shot in a hotel hallway and at an elevator landing, Ventura, in a hoodie, tries to flee the hotel room she was sharing with Combs. She appears to be in a rush – she has bags of her things, and when she reaches the elevator bank, she’s still trying to put on her shoes. She’s just moments from getting away. But Combs, naked save for a towel, marches down the hallway and finds her. He throws Ventura to the ground and begins kicking her. Later, he corners her and pelts a vase at her. The video ends when Combs drags Ventura, still on the ground, down the hallway, back to their hotel room. In the video, when Combs kicks Ventura, she lies perfectly still on the patterned carpet, her hunched frame carrying a practiced resignation. It does not appear to be the first time that this has happened.
The video matches allegations that Ventura made in a lawsuit against Combs that was quickly settled last year. In that suit, Ventura wrote that “in or around March 2016 … at the InterContinental Hotel in Century City, Los Angeles, Mr Combs became extremely intoxicated and punched Ms Ventura in the face, giving her a black eye. After he fell asleep, Ms Ventura tried to leave the hotel room, but as she exited, Mr Combs awoke and began screaming at Ms Ventura. He followed her into the hallway of the hotel while yelling at her. He grabbed at her, and then took glass vases in the hallway and threw them at her, causing glass to crash around them as she ran to the elevator to escape.”
Many did not believe Ventura when she filed her lawsuit, which in addition to the abuse at the Los Angeles hotel detailed a series of alleged attacks, druggings, rape, sex trafficking and forced production of pornography by Combs. That Ventura disclosed all this painful and humiliating information in public, in such detail and at such risk was not enough for some people to believe her. That Combs paid Ventura off almost immediately in order to stop the lawsuit wasn’t enough, either. They didn’t believe her when three other women and one man made similar allegations against Combs, including rape, sexual harassment, nonconsensual pornography and trafficking. And they did not believe her when Combs’ Miami and LA homes were raided by the Department of Homeland Security this past spring, allegedly in connection with a federal sex trafficking investigation.
For his part, Combs at the time denied all of Ventura’s allegations – as he has denied the allegations from his other accusers. “For the last couple of weeks, I have sat silently and watched people try to assassinate my character, destroy my reputation and my legacy,” Combs said in a statement issued last year, soon after several of the suits were filed. “Sickening allegations have been made against me by individuals looking for a quick payday. Let me be absolutely clear: I did not do any of the awful things being alleged. I will fight for my name, my family and for the truth.”
But after CNN released the video of him assaulting Ventura last week, he changed his tune. In a video posted to his Instagram account on Sunday, Combs admitted to the violence shown in the footage, despite having previously denied it. “My behavior on that video is inexcusable,” he said. “I take full responsibility for my actions in that video. I am disgusted. I was disgusted then when I did it. I’m disgusted now.” He thought that when it was her word against his, he would win. The video seems to have changed his calculation.
It shouldn’t have. There are few issues that spark such flights of fancy, such creative and dogged denial, as accusations of gender violence. In order to deny that men rape, assault and beat women, people will invent conspiracy theories of women out to destroy men. They will question the basic functions of memory and identification; they will concoct elaborate plots in which the accusing women are evil, or insidious, condescending rationales in which they are crazy. This epistemic flight from the reality of gender abuse is itself a kind of insanity: people will do crazy, deranged and degrading things in order not to have to believe women.
But Ventura should have been believed from the start. That the video evidence matches her account of the attack exactly is a sign of what every expert in sexual and domestic violence already knows: that people really do lie about rape and abuse. They lie about it baldly and maliciously, all the time. But it’s not the women who accuse men who do this lying. It’s the men who deny it.
Ventura met Combs in 2005, when she was 19 and he was 37. There is one reason why men pursue women who are so dramatically younger than them: because they think those women are easy to control. She didn’t get free of him until 2019. She deserves those years back. She also deserves privacy – to not be defined by the worst things that someone else did to her. Now a video of one of the worst moments of her life has gone viral – a humiliation that she does not deserve. You don’t have to watch the video. No one should have to watch it. Because they should have believed her the first time.
Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist
In the US, the domestic violence hotline is 1-800-799-SAFE (7233). In the UK, call the national domestic abuse helpline on 0808 2000 247, or visit Women’s Aid. In Australia, the national family violence counselling service is on 1800 737 732. Other international helplines may be found via www.befrienders.org
