Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Trial Begins With Explicit Accounts of Sex and Violence | #childpredator | #kidsaftey | #childsaftey

Sean Combs, one of America’s most influential music moguls, was accused by federal prosecutors on Monday of leading a criminal enterprise that enabled his abuse of women and worked to cover it up.

As his trial got underway in Federal District Court in Lower Manhattan, prosecutors painted him as a serial sexual predator who orchestrated drug-fueled sex marathons with prostitutes. Mr. Combs’s lawyers acknowledged that he was responsible for domestic violence but denied that he had committed sex trafficking or run a racketeering enterprise.

In lurid detail, Emily A. Johnson, the prosecutor who delivered a 50-minute opening statement for the government, portrayed Mr. Combs as a man who ordered the performance of sex acts and “called himself the king.”

“To the public, he was Puff Daddy or Diddy,” Ms. Johnson said. “A cultural icon, a businessman — larger than life. But there was another side to him, a side that ran a criminal enterprise.”

One of the government’s first witnesses was a man who said he been paid as much as $6,000 to engage in lengthy sexual encounters with Mr. Combs’s girlfriend Casandra Ventura while the music mogul watched. He said he also overheard what he believed to be Mr. Combs striking Ms. Ventura in an adjoining room.