Sean Diddy Combs lied in plain sight, but Cassandra “Cassie” Ventura told the truth. I’d gamble that absolutely no one was surprised by the horrific turn of events.
In a 35-page affidavit, Cassie shared that her ex, Diddy, punched her “in the face, giving her a black eye” and that she attempted to sneak out of the hotel room where the assault took place after he had fallen to sleep. The legal document stated:
“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 the glass to crash around them as she ran to the elevator to escape.”
Cassie gave a censored account of what happened to her on that fateful night back in March 2016. On May 17, CNN released a video that showed Diddy doing dirty work, which he had previously denied. Up until then, mad men and women who had turned a blind eye and ear to Diddy’s alleged dastardly behavior supported him. And though it seems naysayers needed an unabridged visual version of Cassie having her ass literally kicked by the disgraced mogul before they could actually buy into “believing a Black woman,” my own past experience informs me that sometimes even that ain’t enough and that folks actually do believe terrible men are brutalizing women. They just don’t give a fuck about them.
In my twenties, like Cassie, I got the shit beat out of me by a nilgrim I was dating at the time. Unbeknownst to me, he had a history of beating the brakes off of women, beating them bloody, breaking legs, collarbones, confidence and trust. Do you know who did know about his violent ass ways toward women? His mama, daddy, sister, brothers, cousins and friends. All the nilgrims but me were aware he was a ticking time bomb who was capable of forcing his way into my home, splitting a dining room table in half with my 150-pound body, ripping 90 thumb-sized braids from the scalp, and using my face as punching back for his angry fist until I was unrecognizable in the mirror—and severing the tendons in my left hand.
They knew. All these nilgrims knew.
Not one of them tapped me on the shoulder, pulled me to the side, sent a smoke signal, flew a kite, mailed a postcard, Morse code, a whisper, wink-wink-nod-nod—not a single warning that I was in imminent danger and dating a violently unstable nigga. They all knew, like the many people who held court with Diddy—male and female— While he chose violence, they chose complacency. Within a year, I was laid up in Brooklyn hospital wondering if I’d be able to open and close my hand or ever use my fingers again. Before me, he had broken baby mama number two’s leg, and before her, he had severely beaten and humiliated baby mama number one, and before her, he fractured an ex-girlfriend’s collarbone by body slamming her onto a set of concrete stairs.
They. All. Knew.
Family and friends aren’t the only culprits in these egregious situations. Government agencies are sorry pieces of shit, too. When it comes to victim-shaming, NYPD is one of the best to do it.
“Did you provoke him?” I was asked.
“Were you messing around on him?”
“What would make him do this to you?
The Brooklyn district attorney then had their turn of retraumatizing me on the fine details for holes that might foil their case. The Office of Victims Services wanted 99 shades of proof that I needed victims services. The extensor splint wrapped around my arm, nor the rubber bands that were surgically embedded into the tips of each of my fingers just weren’t enough—neither were the bloodshot eyes, patchy scalp and paranoia. Instead of receiving help from all three entities that exist to protect and serve the people, I walked away with a piece of paper: a carbon copy order of protection that required my abuser to stay away from me for five years. He violated that order each of those five years. He stalked me in real life, and decades later, he stalked me online.
This experience isn’t unique to me—a Black girl from around the way or Cassie, who has sat in the lap of luxury. Intimate partner violence ain’t novel ‘cause Diddy is the proverbial nigga next door, down the block, and around the corner, thriving in right under our noses, whipping on women with no impunity.
Damn, nearly half of all women have experienced some form of intimate partner violence. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention reported about 41% of women have been sexually assaulted, physically assaulted or stalked by an intimate partner, and well over 61 million women know what psychological aggression feels like in a romantic relationship. Black women reckon with domestic violence under a far graver reality, which involves being six times more likely than white women to go from abuse victims to homicide victims at the hands of intimate partners. And get this: according to the Violence Policy Center, which produces an annual report titled When Men Murder Women, “Nearly all —92% — of these killings were intra-racial,” meaning Black men are killing Black women exponentially.
This death disparity should give context for just how heinous a lot of these niggas are, how shaken female victims of domestic violence really are, the level of complicity and enabling that goes down in Black spaces—cause people be knowing and not giving a fuck about Black women.
At this point, the proof of black eyes, broken noses, fists, and feet against Black women’s bodies is a spectacle. Nilgrims know.
