'Well, we're well into week two of the racketeering and sex trafficking and prostitution trial against Sean "Diddy" Combs. And today, jurors heard from a key, and I mean key, prosecution witness, Dr. Dawn Hughes. Now, she's a clinical and a forensic psychologist who's known for her testimony in very high-profile cases like R. Kelly and NXIVM, also the Amber Heard-Johnny Depp trial as well. Now, Hughes has not met the people involved in this particular case, including Cassie Ventura, who is Diddy's long-term girlfriend and one of the named victims in this case, whose allegations of abuse during their relationship are a huge part of this case against Diddy. But this perspective, understanding why people stay in abusive relationships, even might cooperate or try to please, or have love still for their abusers, this is really a critical part to the prosecution and defense's case. You know what? We're going to try to unpack all of it by talking to another expert today who can really educate us in all this as well. I'm Laura Coates, and this is Trial by Jury.

First, I wanna get an update from someone else who has been in that courtroom with me today. I'm talking about CNN's own Elizabeth Wagmeister. All right, Elizabeth, there's a lot to unpack. They had some pretty key testimony moments today. Share your thoughts.

'The first witness today that the jury heard from was the special agent who oversaw the search warrant on Diddy's Miami mansion. We all remember back in 2024, that big spectacle, when both of Diddy homes were raided. Well, now we and the jury are getting a clearer picture of exactly what was seized and exactly what went down that day. So, this special agent showed a series of photos of some of the items that were seized from the home. We saw pictures of guns. There was a handgun that was found in a security booth of sorts. There was two AR-15s that were found in the master bedroom closet. There were also numerous bottles of baby oil and Astroglide found in the home. In fact, the special agent said that 25 bottles of baby-oil were found in just one closet. There were 18 pairs of seven-inch platform heels that were seized from the home, also drugs. We have heard from a few witnesses, Laura, throughout this trial that Diddy had something that he called a med bag, M-E-D, like a medicine bag, and it's where he kept his drugs according to testimony. And many of the witnesses have said that that was a Louis Vuitton bag. That's something that Cassie testified to. But today it was a Gucci bag, Gucci bag. And we saw photos of that with different pills and powdery substances, many of which, according to the agent, tested for things like MDMA and cocaine. So, obviously, illegal drugs that were found in the home. Now, Here's what I'm curious where the prosecution is going next with this, because obviously it is illegal to have illegal drugs, it's not illegal to had baby oil. The jury has seen so many photos and has heard so much testimony from multiple witnesses about baby oil, that I wonder if they're getting a bit numb to this. Is it not shocking anymore. You know, in the opening statement from the defense, they said, our client's sex life may be weird to you. You may not like it, but that does not mean that he is a sex trafficker or a racketeer.

Today we're joined by Dr. Lisa Fontes, a university professor and author of "Invisible Chains," a book about coercive control. She's also frequently an expert witness in legal cases involving intimate partner violence and coercive control and she's right here with us to try to unpack what the jury heard today, also why they were hearing it and how power and control all can work behind closed doors. So let's jump right in, Dr. Fontes, because I need your mind here. And right to the heart of this idea of the preconceived or maybe misconceptions people have, why does someone stay?

Well, I'm so happy to be with you here today, Laura, and this is exactly what I talk about in the cases where I'm an expert witness as well. Dawn Hughes today is speaking as what they call a blind expert or a subject matter expert, which means that she hasn't found out a lot about this case. She hasn't read the documents. She hasn't interviewed the parties. She's just speaking about the issues. And one of the prime issues is that issue that you raise, why might someone stay in this relationship? So Dr. Hughes explained that from the perspective of the tactics that an abuser would use that the jury might not be aware of. The abuser has a bunch of tactics to use to try to keep this person with him. And the ones that we've heard described in this case include Mr. Combs's showing Cassie Ventura videotapes that he'd taken of her during these forced sexual marathons. And saying, if you try to leave me, I will release these to the public, which she thought of as ruining her career. So in her case, in addition to the physical abuse, which we've seen in the video, and the sexual abuse, which she's described in great detail and others have described as well, the drugs which were pushed onto her and which she also used apparently to numb some of the abuse. We also have him threatening to blackmail her. So these are things that the psychologist can talk about. She also talked about trauma bonding. And trauma bonding is the feelings of attachment which someone can develop when they're isolated from a lot of other people and are with the abuser.

But unpack that a little bit more, because the idea of trauma bonding, I think, for so many, might be counterintuitive. The idea of, if somebody is harming you, why would your attachment and bond strengthen? And one thing that you testified today was to suggest, well, listen, you might be so demoralized, or ashamed, or denigrated in some way, that you find yourself unable to talk to anyone else. But guess who knows everything? The abuser. And that can form the attachment. Have you found that to be the case in your study?

I absolutely have found that to be the case in my work. So, the victim becomes isolated. She's isolated because she doesn't have contact with many people, meaningful contact, contact alone where she can speak freely. But when she does, how could she describe what she's living, what she is going through? No one would understand. But who understands that? Sean Combs, because he was there. So they share this private world together. And even though it's a world that causes her pain, it's a world that she can talk about with him. He also undoubtedly, occasionally gave her comfort. He gave her drugs that relieved some of the pain that she was in. He denigrated her, he insulted her, he insulted looks, he was very controlling about the clothes that she wore, the makeup that she wear, and so on. But I'm sure that there were some compliments in there as well. So he used both the carrot and the stick to keep her around and to keep her submissive.

I want to talk more about that because one of the areas that the witness, Dawn Hughes, talked about today was this notion of love and attention and attraction and companionship and that there was a psychological bond and that somebody who is victimized by an abuser is searching for the honeymoon period, searching for the love bombing where that person displays the qualities they indeed want and seek out. And they are more willing to tolerate, to exist day by day, to avoid pain and injury and harm, hoping for that person that they love to reveal themselves again. This is really important for the jury, Doctor, because they're hearing testimony that, well, she returned time and time again, or they had these loving text messages that were exchanged. What impact are those loving moments, you think, on assessing someone's feeling of being victimized?

So, let me start with the love bombing, and then I want to make sure I get to those texts because they seem like they're slightly different things. So, the love bombing occurs often in the beginning stages of the relationship. Remember, Cassie was 19 when she met Mr. Combs, who was in his late 30s. And I imagine, I wasn't there, but I imagine that he wooed her with all the kinds of things that he could do for her, the 10 record deal, the glamorous lifestyle, and perhaps behaved lovingly towards her as well. And so this is like a tool in his toolbox that he can pull out if he wants to, to court her again and again, to groom her again and again to make her attached to him.

By reminding her of those times, you're saying?

'Right, reminding her those times not necessarily by even talking about them, but by giving her some hint that that person is still in there. And she testified that she thought that that person, that loving person, that affectionate and appreciative person was the real Sean Combs. And this monster who she saw from time to time, she said his eyes went black. This wasn't the real him. So she took it on to help him get back to the real him. So that's love, that's caretaking, and that's attachment. And that can be a full-time job. If somebody is with a domestic abuser, it feels like a full-time job to make them feel good. And also, It's only safe...

'Wait, it's a full-time job because their safety is directly dependent on their mood being sound and safe and upbeat?

'That's exactly it. So, a domestic violence victim will please and appease the abuser or use fawning, that's another term that's used, to try to deescalate, to try to keep the abuser happy, to try keep the abuser in a good mood. And that's where we come to those texts. Those texts, "I love you," "I'm looking forward to the freak-off." Those kinds of texts are another way to please and appeas the abuser. They should not be used to judge how she was actually feeling in any given moment. If she was feeling great fear but she wanted to be safe she is going to try to keep him happy.

'A phrase that was used in court was "higher-order planning." And this was with respect to the psychological consequences from abuse. And I should say, Dawn Hughes has not interviewed Cassie Ventura or Sean "Diddy" Combs. She does not have, according to her testimony, any personal knowledge. She was testifying more broadly about the academic and intellectual and clinical-based research that suggests different categories of responses to demonstrate to the jurors that these could be some of the consequences and psychological impact of abuse. But you talked about higher-order planning and that somebody who has been abused would no longer have that. They'd be able to only live day-to-day, micro-focusing essentially on how to avoid wrath. Describe to me the impact of not having this higher-order planning ability any longer.

'Well, if we think about it, we think about what Cassie Ventura described, these days long sex marathons full of drugs. She said it took her days to recover and by the time she recovered she was forced to do the next one. So, it's hard to think about your life. It's hard get any perspective in your life if you're just trying to think of how am I going to do what he is pushing me to when I have a urinary tract infection. Or I'm hungry, I'm sleepy. She was made to take drugs to stay awake in these, during these filmings, during the sex acts according to her testimony. So you can't step back, you don't have the peace you don have the solitude you don't have the serenity to make long-term plans when you're just trying to think about getting through to the next day. And even though the setting of this Sean Combs case, the setting in which these abuses occurred, was more elegant, there were more people involved, there was more money and drugs than in your average domestic violence case, the dynamics are very much the same. This is like the kind of situation that I see quite often in terms of the tactics that Mr. Combs allegedly used to control Ms. Ventura and the ways that he kept her in his field.

Let's talk about money and stature and celebrity, because all those three things seem to go hand in hand in a lot of what the prosecution is relaying through their witnesses to the jury, that there was a financial dependence, that there was a psychological and tangible resource issue preventing her from being able to leave. And then you add on to that, as the witness today talked about, Dawn Hughes, that a celebrity status that appears to be unequal to that of your own, amplifies that power dynamic to the disadvantage of the victim. Describe that impact of money and wealth and fame on an alleged victim's ability to leave.

Well, let's think about if things were even. If things were even then she would be free to leave. But if we look at all of the different power imbalances here, we have the difference in age quite a few years, more than 15 years. We have the difference, she was an aspiring singer and he was an established music executive when they met. He has vast amounts of money. She's trying to get by from what I understand and is trying to launch her career. So he had all of these advantages, which he shared with her in ways that would keep her close. So he would distribute money, he signed a 10 record deal, which he only produced from what I understand one of those, but gave her reason to believe that the others were going to happen, they were going to happen, to keep her involved, to keep believing. And so she really, it was so incredibly imbalanced from the beginning to the end, and that was the way he wanted it. We've heard from other witnesses as well about how terrified they were of Mr. Combs and Mr. Combs's associates. Dan Phillip, one of the male sex workers, spoke about how Mr. Combs seemed to have absolute power and he couldn't get away from him. So he was frightened and everybody in this sphere was frightened. One of the witnesses today spoke about Mr. Combs constantly threatening to fire him. So Mr. Combs used this power over all the time on Ms. Ventura, but on other people too, if we believe what people have alleged, which I do.

'And that's interesting that you say that because one of the big moments in the court seems to be this back-and-forth about being a blind expert, as you've defined it, as somebody who's intentionally unfamiliar with the specific facts of a case and making generalizations based on informed expertise and perspective versus somebody who would have been treating or have personal knowledge and insight into the specific relationship. You have testified as an expert. You know full well the distinctions. Is there a disadvantage or one in which you think compromises an expert's credibility if they are indeed a blind expert?

'I prefer to call it a subject matter expert, but I know the term blind expert is what was used in court today. And I actually think that the reason they have chosen to use a subject-matter expert rather than have Dawn Hughes or someone else interview the parties is because they want to eliminate the bias they want you to reduce the bias. So, I think that she's more credible because she's speaking about these very typical dynamics and guess what? Even though Sean Combs has millions more than you are i will ever dream of, the dynamics are very typical for a domestic violence case and a sexual abuse case. Intimate partner sexual violence is actually the term although it's different here because he involved so many other people in the violence.

An area that was very particularly interesting, I think, for the jurors was the notion of memory and disclosure. The choices that those who are victimized make in terms of when they share or what they share or whether they share again, shame seemed to be the overarching concern. Can you just describe the judgment that might influence one's ability to disclose was happening to them.

It's difficult to grow up without some shame about sexuality, and I'm sure Ms. Ventura is no exception here. Then, she was made to engage in acts which were deliberately humiliating, deliberately dehumanizing. I don't know what I can mention here.

Urination, perhaps, and other aspects of making her feel as though she was less than human.

Exactly. And so, that Sean Combs directed these scenes where he had men mistreat her and he had her be sexually with multiple men, with a man doing multiple sex acts over time. She said she felt like this was her job and that was not what she signed up to be. She was a singer. She wanted to have a career in music. So the whole thing felt very shameful and degrading to her. And that would make it very hard to tell anyone. People often feel ashamed when they're a victim of domestic violence as well. They feel like they should know better. They shouldn't have gotten into this relationship. They should be able to find a way to get out and who will possibly understand what they're going through? So that can make it very hard to disclose in addition to the fear that certainly she and the other witnesses described.

Is the fact that sex is part of the abuse that's alleged make it that much more difficult to express what has happened to someone?

A hundred percent. Sex is a very powerful tool to control another person. It's so intimate in the body. It is exhausting, the kinds of things that Ms. Ventura described. It weakens a person and it is humiliating, which silences them. And so she was really silenced. We also saw testimony last week where she described being hit for speaking. That he didn't want to hear her speak. He had told her not to speak. And so silencing was a big part of the abuse as well. That was quite deliberate.

Does abuse have to be continuous to be impactful or coercive? And I should note the coercion aspect of it was one of the reasons that this witness was on a very tight leash. There was a judicial order of sorts that had a set category of things that she was able to testify about. Does abuse and violence have to be continuous, to be impactful, on one's subordination?

Abuse is usually not continuous. It's usually more maybe you'd call it spotty. So if there's abusive incidents and that's sprinkled in with kind of normal life and maybe even some loving moments and the existing of the loving moments or the affectionate moments, the happy moments even that doesn't cancel out the abuse. The victim knows that at any moment things could get bad again. So that's a constant threat that's hanging over her head.

Dr. Lisa Fontes, thank you so much. Really insightful.

Tomorrow will be another huge day. In fact, the prosecution might very well call five witnesses in a single day, including one Kid Cudi. This is somebody who had been in a relationship with Cassie Ventura, and that incurred the wrath of Sean "Diddy" Combs, according to testimony. We're going to hear from him. I wonder what he will be able to offer in terms of the charges in this case. Will it be corroboration? Will we hear something new? And more than we expect? Stay tuned. Thanks for listening, and be sure to follow Trial by Jury wherever you get your podcasts. We'll have more for you later this week. This episode was produced by Lori Galarreta, Graelyn Brashear, Alexandra Saddler, and Rachid Haoues. Our technical director is Dan Dzula, and the executive producer of CNN Audio is Steve Lickteig, with support from Emily Williams, Dan Bloom, Robert Mathers, Alex Manasseri, Lisa Namerow and Jamus Andrest. I'm Laura Coates, and I'm here for it.