Diddy’s Former Assistant Reacts to Video of Cassie Being Abused: ‘I Felt Sick and I Felt Violently Angry’

Suzi Siegel, a former assistant for Sean “Diddy” Combs, broke her silence on the shocking footage of him abusing ex-girlfriend Cassie Ventura. 

Siegel worked for Diddy, 54, between 2008 and 2009, during the time his reality show I Want to Work For Diddy aired on VH1. This was shortly after he began dating Ventura, 37, in 2007. 

Although Siegel claims she never witnessed Combs being abusive to Ventura during her employment, she said she was not surprised by the singer’s lawsuit against Diddy, nor the recently released surveillance footage showing him viciously assaulting Cassie in 2016.

“I felt sick and I felt violently angry and I felt like I’m sure a lot of men and women feel looking at that video: that it’s so disturbing, that the video doesn’t lie,” Siegel told CNN on Friday about the footage.

When discussing details about the video, such as Ventura not wearing shoes while trying to make her escape, Siegel noted that the moment was “terror.”

“That’s what you would do if there was a fire, right? You would just run out, grab what you could. So I can only imagine, looking at that, the fear that she felt she had to get out of that room, and bare feet in order to be safe or protect herself,” she said.

Reflecting on her experiences working for Diddy, Siegel stated, “I observed nothing that would lead me to believe, or there was no scuttle…I never saw him speak harshly to her or be abusive toward her or anything like that. I rode in the limos with them, I went to parties with them. I guess what I would say is even though I never saw anything that could corroborate what’s in that lawsuit and what we just saw, there was not one cell in my body that was surprised.”

The former assistant said that despite not having witnessed any of Diddy’s alleged crimes and not having been personally mistreated by him, Siegel believes that an imbalance of power dynamics may have played a major role in his behavior toward Cassie and his employees.

“I think that the power dynamic in a situation like that, especially at the beginning of her career, so young and beautiful and talented, and she hooked herself or became involved with somebody who had so much power—I felt that working for him. I’m sure the whole team felt that. He’s a mogul. So of course, he’s the big boss,” Siegel said. “But I think that you could imagine certainly in my interactions with him, you could imagine how that would dissipate and sort of seep into every aspect of his life and especially his relationships.”

She continued, “Imagine how that would be, and then he’s rich and not only is he rich, but he controls your career and all you want in your career. She’s an artist. She wants to make music. She really was an artist, is an artist, and now all of a sudden she’s with somebody who could make that happen for her and it doesn’t happen. He just didn’t see your humanity when he looked at you. I felt it felt very obvious to me that everyone was just sort of there to be used, that he can get the most out of you. For example, I went to go work for him. I’m a pretty senior person. It was sort of an odd thing. I have a fancy master’s degree, whatever, who cares. But it was, you know, he wants to get me for as cheaply as he could and most people would just dive in and take it, right? Because you think that you’re gonna get something by working for him.”

Siegel, who described Combs as “brilliant” and “one of the best minds” she’s ever been around, also conceded, “I think when the power differential is so awful and you just can get away with anything that you want.”

Watch Siegel’s CNN interview here.