What the Sean Combs verdict told us about understanding abuse
The verdict says as much about our failure to recognize the most pernicious impacts of abuse as it does about the strategy of the prosecution in the case.
By Mimi Rocah and Berit Berger
Last Wednesday, a jury acquitted Sean Combs of the most serious charges of racketeering conspiracy and sex trafficking against him and convicted him of the lower-level charges of interstate transportation of prostitutes. As federal prosecutors of several decades in the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York, we handled many cases involving these types of charges. In our view, the Monday-morning quarterbacking about the outcome of the trial is telling and infuriating. The “blame the prosecutors” bandwagon that is permeating the media commentary right now misses an important point that demands reckoning: The verdict says as much about our failure to recognize the most pernicious impacts of abuse as it does about the strategy of the prosecution in the case.
First, let’s be clear: acquittals happen. Getting 12 people to agree on anything is tricky, and none of us know what happened in the jury room or what compromises were reached. That someone as famous as Combs, with access to some of the most skilled and powerful defense attorneys money can buy, was convicted of two federal felonies each carrying the possibility of significant jail time, is not something to shrug off. And, yet, clearly the fact that he was not convicted of the sex trafficking or racketeering charges cannot be ignored. We were taught as federal prosecutors that a lack of acquittals as a prosecutor probably means you’re not charging challenging cases. Sometimes—especially in areas entrenched in archaic ways of thinking like, say, women, sex, and consent—the envelope has to be pushed or it never moves forward. Many advocates viewed it as groundbreaking (as in the prosecution of R. Kelly) in significant ways to help to overcome common misperceptions that sex trafficking victims come from overseas when in reality victims are bought and sold, coerced, and defrauded right here in our neighborhoods.
Was Combs’ acquittal the result of “overcharging” or a failure by the prosecutors, as many commentators seem to be concluding? In our opinion, no. No prosecution is perfect, and there is no question that using the racketeering statutes in cases like this is an aggressive use of that statute. But it has been used before in similar cases and was certainly permissible under the law and necessary, given the long history of Combs’ alleged abusive conduct and the need for the jury to see and hear the full picture. We know that Combs was enabled and emboldened by his associates, and none of the crimes he was accused of having committed - including the two for which he was convicted - could have happened without the assistance of others. That sounds an awful lot like racketeering to us. In addition to assisting in his crimes, Combs’ associates repeatedly turned a blind eye to the abuse Cassie Ventura and the defense witness identified as Jane described. Multiple witnesses testified about abuse, including George Kaplan, Combs’s assistant who testified that he heard a physical altercation between Combs and Ventura on a private plane ride to Las Vegas and heard Ventura yell “isn’t anybody seeing this?” That he and others did nothing shows the complete disregard Combs and his associates had for Ventura’s dignity and safety.
The fact is we don’t know why the jury reached the verdict it did. One alternate juror who was not present for the deliberations explained that, in his opinion, Ventura and Jane seemed to be “willing participants” and not victims of sex trafficking. Though we don’t know if other jurors shared this view, we do know that much of the discussion of this case, both during the trial and after the verdict, has exposed our culture’s continued failure to understand the full effects of physical and mental abuse on victims. That the defense’s skilled but antiquated arguments prevailed given the evidence in this case says more about how far we still have to go in eradicating myths about women, consent, power, and rape than any particular prosecution strategy. To be clear, this is not a criticism of Combs’ defense team; his lawyers did their jobs making the best and most effective arguments for their client, as is their obligation—and they did it extremely well. The defense conceded, as it had to given the video and photographic evidence, that there was serious, significant, violent abuse of Ventura by Combs. But, the defense argued, and apparently the jury agreed, that repeated physical and emotional abuse and manipulation were separate from Ventura engaging in degrading and humiliating commercial sexual conduct.
The defense argument that domestic abuse isn’t “force or coercion” under the sex trafficking statute unless it is directly and immediately tied to the sex acts was undercut by clear evidence to that effect presented at trial. The video recording of Combs kicking and beating Ventura at the Intercontinental Hotel in 2016 happened as she fled the hotel room where a “freak off” was occurring. As to the other victim, Jane, the defense did not contest that Combs was violent with her the night of June 18, 2024, and then called an escort over to her house. Jane testified that Combs asked her “is this coercion” when he made her take an ecstasy pill to have sex with the escort even though she told him “no” repeatedly. Those are two incidents of force and coercion that led the victims to engage in commercial sex that a jury could have found under the law is sex trafficking.
Even more important, the focus by the defense on text messages from Ventura and Jane in which they seemed to consent to and in some cases enjoy the freak offs and hotel nights ignores very basic things we as a society have learned about how victims act when faced with sustained abuse—their free will and ability to think rationally are often severely eroded. Sex trafficking can and does happen in relationships; when it does, it is often even more insidious and harder to escape. Domestic abuse that causes someone to engage in commercial sex is still sex trafficking. And evidence that Ventura or Jane may have consented to any one of the sexual encounters doesn’t negate the ability to not consent any other or every other time.
The fact that antiquated arguments about what consent looks like when it comes from a victim of abuse are still presented with confidence in court means that we have much more work to do. The fact that they were accepted by a jury and by so wide an audience in the public commentary has hit hard in the community of people who advocate for victims of sex trafficking and sexual abuse. We, like many advocates, had thought that we had moved to a place of greater understanding about how abuse and consent work. But the outcome of this case sadly indicates to us and many disappointed victim advocates that we still have a very long way to go.
Mimi Rocah was the district attorney of Westchester County, New York, from 2021 to 2024 and was a federal prosecutor from 2001 to 2017. Berit Berger is a lecturer in law at Columbia and Fordham Law Schools. She most recently served as Executive Assistant District Attorney for Policy and Strategic Initiatives and Chief Ethics Officer for the Westchester County District Attorney’s Office. She was a federal prosecutor from 2007 to 2018 in the U.S. Attorney’s Offices for both the Eastern and Southern Districts of New York.
Unfortunately, most men and women have no understanding of the effects abuse has on victims. Jury instructions in cases involving sexual abuse need to include clearly stated descriptions of how easily victims can be cowed into apparent, but truly not, willing participation. Simply put, without careful instruction, the average juror is just not qualified to evaluate the mental or emotional states of victims of sexual abuse.
So many people claim “trauma” these days, especially on social media. “I have PTSD from…”, “OMG I was totally traumatized by that…”, “Oh it’s my ancestral trauma triggering me”. And yet, they do not understand the effect of trauma on the nervous system and what complex trauma actually looks like. Like so many things in this day and age, I am disgusted but not surprised by the verdict. I do not blame the prosecutor. And it was a stretch for a jury of 12, most of whom are probably unfamiliar with trauma and its effects, to understand the distinctions in question here.