Cassie Ventura arrives at The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute benefit gala celebrating “China: Through the Looking Glass” on Monday, May 4, 2015, in New York. Image: Evan Agostini/Invision/AP
Casandra Ventura, the R&B singer and actor known simply as Cassie, has welcomed her third child, a son.
The news arrived on Wednesday, May 28, in the midst of the ongoing Sean “Diddy” Combs sex trafficking trial, at which Cassie is an essential witness. She finished testifying earlier this month while visibly pregnant over four emotional days on the stand, during which she described being beaten and raped by a man she once loved.
Reports from multiple media outlets said Cassie gave birth in a New York hospital on Tuesday.
Stylist Deonte Nash, who had worked for Combs for a decade, testified on Wednesday that he had spoken to Cassie the previous day to congratulate her on the birth.
Cassie, 38, is perhaps best known for the platinum-selling 2006 hit single “Me & U.” She married personal trainer Alex Fine in September 2019. Their first daughter, Frankie Stone Fine, was born that same year, and they welcomed their second daughter, Sunny Cinco Fine, in 2021.
The Associated Press does not typically name people who say they have been sexually abused unless they come forward publicly, as Cassie has.
Combs, 55, is on trial in New York on charges that he exploited his status as an entertainment executive to force women, including Cassie, into drug-fueled “freak-offs” with male sex workers and engaged in other abusive acts against people who relied on him for their careers.
After departing the trial, Cassie, who dated Combs for a decade, released a statement through her lawyer saying she hoped her testimony would help others “heal from the abuse and fear.”
Representatives for Cassie and Fine did not immediately respond to requests for comment. /ra