Rape accuser and former worker “Mia” spent a second day underneath cross-examination at Sean “Diddy” Combs’ sex-trafficking trial, explaining for 2 hours why she repeatedly instructed the rap tycoon that she beloved and admired him.
There have been many occasions that “Puff,” as she known as him, “was once my protector,” she instructed a federal jury in Manhattan.
“I did love that dude,” she testified Monday.
“He protected me from the opposite variations of himself,” she mentioned, referring to the variations of Combs she’d beforehand described flinging her into partitions and sexually assaulting her.
Mia, a key prosecution witness who’s testifying underneath a pseudonym, was requested on Monday to learn aloud from dozens of heart-emoji-dotted texts and Instagram posts she had despatched Combs throughout and after her eight years working as his private assistant and movie firm government.
In a single textual content alternate from January 2019, she instructed Combs she’d dreamed she was trapped in an elevator with R&B star and sex-trafficking convict R. Kelly. Combs got here to her within the dream, she instructed him within the textual content, to save lots of her, as her “protector.”
Protection lawyer Brian Metal requested Mia how she might use the phrases “protector” and “love” to explain the person she’d additionally testified had sexually and bodily “terrified you.”
As she has greater than a dozen occasions since taking the stand Thursday, Mia described the 2 “Puffs” that she mentioned she knew.
There was the one who certainly terrified her — the risky, usually violent millionaire who she has described in testimony repeatedly slamming her arm in a door, flinging computer systems and bowls of spaghetti at her, and raping her as she slept within the workers bed room of his Los Angeles mansion.
And there was the one she shared “trillions of tales” with, as she mentioned in a textual content to Combs from 2020, which described a sequence of treasured escapades.
In that textual content, she remembered consuming along with Combs at daybreak underneath the Eiffel Tower, and Leonardo DiCaprio grabbing her pink, bedazzled cellphone throughout a Bacarat sport, and “Mick Jagger making an attempt to take me dwelling however I ran away.”
“I like love you!” she signed one other textual content, from July 2022.
Jurors had been additionally proven a cheerful birthday video Mia despatched Combs in 2013 whereas she was nonetheless working for him.
Prosecutors had unsuccessfully fought to maintain jurors from seeing the birthday greeting, saying the handfuls of texts already proven to jurors had been “cumulative” — legalese for overkill.
Protection attorneys try to discredit a half-dozen girls who’ve accused Combs of bodily and sexual brutality — by suggesting they’re disgruntled former staffers and girlfriends who’ve tried to money in by what Metal known as on Monday “a ‘Me-too cash seize.”
Mia’s birthday video to Combs was admitted into proof, and screened for jurors, after protection lawyer Alexandra Shapiro argued it exhibits that Mia has been displaying a “false persona” throughout the three days on the witness stand.
Mia spoke in a transparent however quiet voice. She sat hunched ahead along with her head virtually frequently bowed.
Within the 2013 birthday video, her head was confidently held up and her voice was cheerful.
“I am so blessed to name you my good friend,” she tells him within the video, which additionally featured a product placement — she drinks from a bottle of Aqua Hydrate water, a beverage Combs had invested in.
“To a different 44 years of brilliance! Let’s fuck issues up! Love you!!!” she says within the video, blowing him kisses.
However there have been two Mias as effectively, her testimony has instructed.
“I did not perceive what had occurred to me till lately,” after remedy and talking to prosecutors, Mia instructed the jury.
Mia, who wrapped up her testimony on Monday afternoon, instructed the jury she solely determined final 12 months to come back ahead along with her story of sexual assault.
“I used to be nonetheless deeply ashamed and needed to die with this,” she testified.
“I knew his energy and his wrath,” Mia mentioned when prosecutors questioned her as soon as once more within the afternoon.
“When he was completely happy, I used to be secure,” she added.
Mia labored as a private assistant to designer Georgina Chapman and actor Mike Myers earlier than she began working for Combs in 2009, on the age of about 25, she has mentioned.
Whereas on the witness stand, Mia instructed the jury that Combs had sexually attacked her 4 occasions between 2009 and 2017, together with at his fortieth party at New York’s Plaza Lodge and on his personal jet.
She described working for Combs as “chaotic,” “poisonous,” but “thrilling” at occasions. Mia additionally detailed grueling job hours in her testimony, telling the jury she as soon as labored 5 days with out sleep.
“The highs had been actually excessive and the lows had been actually low,” Mia testified.
Combs has vehemently denied the felony costs towards him and has argued by his protection crew that his sexual encounters have been consensual.
If convicted of the intercourse trafficking and racketeering costs towards him, Combs, a onetime near-billionaire, might resist life behind bars.
