At Diddy trial, rape accuser 'Mia' explains why she told him over and over that she loved him

Business Insider

2 days ago

Rape accuser and former employee "Mia" spent a second day under cross-examination at Sean "Diddy" Combs' sex-trafficking trial, explaining for two hours why she repeatedly told the rap tycoon that she loved and admired him.
There were many times that "Puff," as she called him, "used to be my protector," she told a federal jury in Manhattan.
"I did love that dude," she testified Monday.
"He protected me from the other versions of himself," she said, referring to the versions of Combs she'd previously described flinging her into walls and sexually assaulting her.
Mia, a key prosecution witness who is testifying under a pseudonym, was asked on Monday to read aloud from dozens of heart-emoji-dotted texts and Instagram posts she had sent Combs during and after her eight years working as his personal assistant and film company executive.
In one text exchange from January 2019, she told Combs she'd dreamed she was trapped in an elevator with R&B star and sex-trafficking convict R. Kelly. Combs came to her in the dream, she told him in the text, to save her, as her "protector."
Defense attorney Brian Steel asked Mia how she could use the words "protector" and "love" to describe the man she'd also testified had sexually and physically "terrified you."
As she has more than a dozen times since taking the stand Thursday, Mia described the two "Puffs" that she said she knew.
There was the one who indeed terrified her — the volatile, often violent millionaire who she has described in testimony repeatedly slamming her arm in a door, flinging computers and bowls of spaghetti at her, and raping her as she slept in the staff bedroom of his Los Angeles mansion.
And there was the one she shared "trillions of stories" with, as she said in a text to Combs from 2020, which described a series of treasured escapades.
In that text, she remembered drinking together with Combs at dawn under the Eiffel Tower, and Leonardo DiCaprio grabbing her pink, bedazzled cellphone during a Bacarat game, and "Mick Jagger trying to take me home but I ran away."
"I love love you!" she signed another text, from July 2022.
Jurors were also shown a happy birthday video Mia sent Combs in 2013 while she was still working for him.
Prosecutors had unsuccessfully fought to keep jurors from seeing the birthday greeting, saying the dozens of texts already shown to jurors were "cumulative" — legalese for overkill.
Defense lawyers are trying to discredit a half-dozen women who have accused Combs of physical and sexual brutality — by suggesting they are disgruntled former staffers and girlfriends who have tried to cash in through what Steel called on Monday "a 'Me-too money grab."
Mia's birthday video to Combs was admitted into evidence, and screened for jurors, after defense lawyer Alexandra Shapiro argued it shows that Mia has been displaying a "false persona" during the three days on the witness stand.
Mia spoke in a clear but quiet voice. She sat hunched forward with her head almost continually bowed.
In the 2013 birthday video, her head was confidently held up and her voice was cheerful.
"I'm so blessed to call you my friend," she tells him in the video, which also featured a product placement — she drinks from a bottle of Aqua Hydrate water, a beverage Combs had invested in.
"To another 44 years of brilliance! Let's fuck things up! Love you!!!" she says in the video, blowing him kisses.
But there have been two Mias as well, her testimony has suggested.
"I didn't understand what had happened to me until recently," after therapy and speaking to prosecutors, Mia told the jury.
Mia, who wrapped up her testimony on Monday afternoon, told the jury she only decided last year to come forward with her story of sexual assault.
"I was still deeply ashamed and wanted to die with this," she testified.
"I knew his power and his wrath," Mia said when prosecutors questioned her once again in the afternoon.
"When he was happy, I was safe," she added.
Mia worked as a personal assistant to fashion designer Georgina Chapman and actor Mike Myers before she started working for Combs in 2009, at the age of about 25, she has said.
While on the witness stand, Mia told the jury that Combs had sexually attacked her four times between 2009 and 2017, including at his 40th birthday party at New York's Plaza Hotel and on his private jet.
She described working for Combs as "chaotic," "toxic," yet "exciting" at times. Mia also detailed grueling job hours in her testimony, telling the jury she once worked five days without sleep.
"The highs were really high and the lows were really low," Mia testified.
Combs has vehemently denied the criminal charges against him and has argued through his defense team that his sexual encounters have been consensual.
If convicted of the sex trafficking and racketeering charges against him, Combs, a onetime near-billionaire, could face up to life behind bars.