No One Listens To The Girl Who Stays
What happens when survival gets mistaken for complicity, and the world keeps cheering for the man who broke them.
I’ve never lived through what Mia lived through. But I come from someone who has.
My mother took the stand in a double homicide trial. Her friends were murdered by her boyfriend. She was pregnant with my sister at the time of the murders. She actually went back home where I was living to give birth to my sister. Had she stayed, she probably would have died too. She was dragged into court later, to explain the life she built around a dangerous man and what it cost her to survive it. I was a child when it all unrunraveled. Wondering why love looked like fear and survival looked like silence.
Not only for my mom but for me too.
And later, as I watched my own life unfold. I started to wonder something even harder.
Why did my mother stay with someone who hurt her so badly?
That’s the question Mia was asked. Over and over again. Not just in words, but in tone. In posture. In cross-examination.
Why did you stay?
Why didn’t you say something?
Why didn’t you tell your sister?
Except the “sister” they were talking about wasn’t her sister by blood.
It was Cassie. Another survivor. Another woman who went through the same cycles with the same man. Mia and Cassie used to call each other sisters back then. They were bonded by experience, by trauma, by proximity to power.
So when the defense pressed her. “Why didn’t you tell your sister.” They weren’t just asking about silence. They were trying to sever that bond. To make the jury think the pain wasn’t real if it wasn’t shared. That if Mia had really been abused, she would’ve run to Cassie.
But how do you confide in someone who’s living the same nightmare you are? How do you tell the truth when the truth might destroy both of you?
That’s what they never seem to understand. What I didn't and still don't understand sometimes. Abuse doesn’t just isolate you. It entangles you. It tricks you into thinking that protecting him is protecting yourself. It trains you to hide the worst parts of your story because those are the parts he told you no one would believe. It convinces you that speaking up will ruin the only person who has ever loved you. Even if that love came with bruises, with surveillance, with fear. And if there’s someone else in that same spiral. Someone like Cassie, you stay quiet for her too. Because if you tell the truth? Well, it might pull you under right along with her.
So you wait. You wait for the right moment to speak. For the right words. For someone to believe you before they break you. And when that moment finally comes. When you finally say it out loud? The world still wants to know why you didn’t say it sooner?
I ask myself all the time why my mother stayed. Why she didn’t run when she had the chance. Why she chose a man over me.
But when I see women like Mia take the stand, I don’t feel anger. I feel heartbreak. I believe them. I root for them. I want the jury to understand how hard it is to leave.
And that’s the part that makes me stop. Because why is it so easy to show compassion to strangers and so hard to extend it to the woman who gave birth to me.
Is it because these women didn’t leave me behind? Because I wasn’t the one they disappeared on. Because my life didn’t shatter when theirs did.
I don’t know?!
All I know is that when I hear Mia speak, I feel like I’m listening to a language I grew up with. And I want her to be believed. And somewhere deep down, I think I’m still trying to forgive my mother. For hurting me. For leaving me. For choosing him. And for not knowing how to save herself.
Because now I know. She was a victim too. And it's not that I ever questioned her abuse. I more questioned why I wasn't enough to keep her around.
I was too little to really see the abuse. I just knew my mom was gone.
Some nights she’d be there, distracted but present. Other nights she’d vanish in the middle of the night, and I’d wake up to an empty bed and a knot in my throat. I’d cry without knowing why. I just knew she was gone again.
Sometimes it was an argument.
Her and my grandparents. Voices raised behind closed doors over things I didn’t fully understand but could still feel shaking the walls.
Sometimes it was silence. Just her back, moving down the hallway. Away from me. Always away.
I saw a lot of her back when I was young. Sometimes her face. Mainly, just the shape of her leaving though.
So while my story isn’t like Mia’s, and it isn’t like Cassie’s. It’s hers. My mother’s. And when I watch women like Mia take the stand. When I hear the questions. When I see them cry. It pulls something buried from the deepest part of me.
Because I know what happens when a woman chooses the wrong man over the right love. Because I was that love. And I was left behind.
I remember one time she finally called. I don’t know how long it had been. Days. Weeks. It always felt longer than it probably was. But hearing her voice on the other end of the line lit something in me.
We talked for a little while. I don’t even remember what we said. I just remember feeling like maybe she missed me. Maybe she was coming back.
Then she told me she had to click over. There was another call. She said she would be right back.
So I waited. I held onto that old cordless phone for hours. Not moving. Not speaking. Just holding my breath, like maybe that would make her hurry. The dial tone eventually burning into my ear. She never came back.
My mom and I don't really speak these days either. My expectations are always too high. Instead of getting hurt, I stay away. That, and she raises my sisters child. Who has a bunch of medical conditions. So, shes to busy to talk…
I don't know.
Back burner who this man, again, in a way. The child that my mother raises is John's first grandson…you see?
That little 8-year-old girl inside of me automatically gets upset when she can't make the time for me.
So, I stopped trying altogether.
Mia’s Testimony
Everybody was waiting for Mia. Her name had been circling for weeks. Whispers. Threads. Redacted documents that lined up a little too perfectly. If Cassie cracked the door open, people believed Mia was going to kick it off the hinges.
The courtroom was holding its breath.
The anticipation of her testimony felt like the moment before a tornado touches down. Quiet, but not calm. The kind of silence that presses against your chest. Like the air itself knows something is about to break.
And it did.
She said Sean Combs raped her in 2010 while she was working as his assistant. He came into her bedroom in the middle of the night and forced himself on her. She froze. Didn’t scream. Didn’t fight. Just laid there. Trying to leave her body.
She told them about the time he made her and Cassie flee on a paddleboard to escape him. That they were hiding. Literally. From him. Drifting out into the water like it was the only safe place left. This man had private security, jet skis, and cameras. These women had a fucking paddleboard and darkness to escape into. Mia said they eventually went back.
Mia also said she once stood on the edge of a balcony and thought about ending it. Because his abuse didn’t just take her peace. It took her will to live.
She talked about the time he poured a bucket of ice/ice water over her head. In front of people. Like it was funny. Who does that to someone who works for them?
She said after the ice, he slammed her arm in a door. Not once. Repeatedly. Over and over until it was bruised and swollen and she couldn’t move it right for days. Can you imagine? Your boss. Your so-called protector. Trapping your arm like that. Slamming the door like he’s trying to break something in you that won’t break.
And then again I sit here writing this and think to myself, ‘Why the hell would someone stay?’
I guess when you’re young and you’re chasing something. When you’re trying to follow your dreams and this person is telling you they can make all of them come true. I mean its Puff Daddy.
It starts to make a sick kind of sense. I don’t know… We do a lot of stupid things when we’re young.
And maybe we should stop asking them why?! Especially, when we just don't get it.
She also said he threw a wad of cash in her face. Like she was trash to be paid and discarded. I wonder what he was on that day. Or if this was just him sober.
She said he masturbated in the back of a car and tried to force her to touch him. Right there in the open. Just exuding all the power he had.
And then she said she loved him.
That’s when the defense showed their teeth. Brian Steel pulled up old messages. Birthday posts. Affectionate texts. He read them out loud to the jury like they were proof of fiction. He said maybe tthiswas her regret. Or revenge. Or just a MeToo grift. He tried to humiliate her. Tried to make her look like a fool for ever loving a man who broke her.
And Mia sat there and said, “I never lied. And I never will.”
She told the jury she had been brainwashed. That her idea of love had been poisoned. That she stayed because she thought maybe the violence was her fault. Or maybe it meant he cared. Or maybe she didn’t know what normal was anymore.
She said she came forward not for attention and not for money but because she heard Cassie’s story and realized her own had been buried so deep it started to rot.
She talked about a dream where she saw him as R Kelly. Steel mocked it. Tried to make her sound insane. But anyone who’s lived through that kind of trauma knew exactly what she meant. It doesn’t come to you in a straight line. It shows up in your sleep. It scrambles the monsters and blends them together until you can’t tell who did what. You just remember how it felt.
She stayed on the stand for two full days. While they picked her apart like she was the one on trial. And she never changed her story. Not once.
The Psychology of an Abuse Victim
If you’ve never lived it, it’s easy to ask why didn’t she leave. Why did she call him king? Why did she still love him?
But if you’ve ever been groomed, ever been isolated, ever been so sure that the abuse was your fault because you didn’t leave sooner, then you already know. Abuse doesn’t start with a slap. It starts with a promise. A carefully delivered fantasy that tells you you’re special. That they see something in you no one else does. That they’re going to change your life.
Then they isolate you. Slowly. They pit you against your family. Your friends. Anyone who might help you leave. They tell you those people are jealous. Unsupportive. Small-minded. So you start to believe it. And you start to believe them.
They build you up and break you down in the same breath. One minute they’re calling you brilliant. The next they’re slamming your arm in a door. The next they’re saying I love you only to throw you into a wall before the sentence even settles.
You tell yourself they’re stressed. You tell yourself they didn’t mean it. You tell yourself this is what it means to love someone powerful. That you’ll be rewarded later for your loyalty.
That’s not weakness. That’s trauma bonding.
That’s what happens when the same person who hurts you is the one who comforts you. It trains your brain to crave their approval. It floods your system with panic and oxytocin at the same time. You stop trying to escape and start trying to manage. You don’t ask is this wrong. You ask how do I fix it.
And when the cycle calms down. When they apologize, when they make you laugh, when they say I don’t know what I’d do without you. It feels like love again. So you stay.
You stay because they made you feel seen. You stay because they made you feel safe once. You stay because you are afraid, not just of them, but of what happens if you leave. You stay because your body is in survival mode and the idea of losing everything feels more dangerous than staying with the person who’s already broken you. I REPEAT- You stay because your body is in survival mode and the idea of losing everything feels more dangerous than staying with the person who’s already broken you.
And sometimes, you still love them.
That’s the part people hate to hear. That a woman can miss the man who shattered her. That she can want his approval. That she can post a birthday message, send a heart emoji, say I’m okay, because the alternative is too terrifying to say out loud.
It doesn’t mean she’s lying. It doesn’t mean she’s stupid. It means her nervous system is doing its job. Survive first. Understand later.
So, when a courtroom asks why didn’t you run or scream or tell someone? What they’re really asking is why didn’t you behave like a victim in a movie?
But real victims are messy. Real victims protect their abusers. Real victims minimize their pain. Real victims go back. Over and over again. Because they’re not just escaping a man. They’re escaping a reality they’ve been conditioned to believe is normal. Its trauma. That’s what abuse looks like in real life.
Abusers don’t walk in wearing warning signs. They show up with attention. With protection. With promises. Cassie said she wasn’t allowed to leave the house without permission. That he handpicked who she could be friends with. He tracked her period for fucks sake. He forced her into “freak-offs” while he watched. He threatened to show the footage to her family if she disobeyed. Basically, psychological imprisonment. And her poor parents. Imagine getting a call from your only daughter saying that her boyfriend is going to release sex tapes of you to all of your co-workers?!
Mia said she once worked five days straight without sleep. She described a night when Diddy threw a full bowl of spaghetti at her. Not during a fight. Not after an argument. It came out of nowhere. Sauce hit her in the chest. Noodles tangled in her hair. She cleaned it up in silence. Not because she thought she deserved it. Because she knew not to react. He was watching. Always watching. Waiting for her to break rank. Seeing if she'd question it. Seeing if she’d make it about her.
*Music mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs has found new love after mourning the loss of Kim Porter and getting over his decade-long relationship with singer Cassie.* That's the headline for this. Gina was in the middle of his break up with Cassie after they dated for 11 years. Diddy knew just how to fuck with Cassie. And the headlines were wrong.
That’s how control works. It doesn’t just punish you. It studies you. It learns how you react. Then erases those reactions. It replaces your instincts with THEIR rules. It gets in your head until your first thought in any room is ‘what will make him mad?’
Me and even sad when she was interning in her notebook she wrote down ‘anticipate his moods.’
You learn to apologize for things you didn’t do. You blame yourself before he can. You forget how to say no without flinching. You start managing his moods like your life depends on it. Because it literally does.
We need to stop asking ‘why didn’t you leave or scream or tell someone?’
We’re picturing a clean break from someone who never let you think for yourself. But truth is….
You don’t just escape an abuser. You have to escape the version of you they created.
And nothings harder to escape than yourself l.
Objection: When the Courtroom Became the Crime Scene
Brian Steel didn’t cross-examine Mia. He tried to dismantle her.
He stood before a federal jury, reading old texts where she called Diddy her protector. He pulled up birthday posts. He said maybe she was lying. Maybe she wanted money. Maybe she wanted attention. He referenced a dream where Mia saw Diddy saving her from R Kelly and asked, “The person who sexually assaulted you came to your rescue?”
She said yes. Not because it made sense. Because trauma rarely does.
The brain does not store trauma in a straight line. It distorts. It protects. It reshapes reality so you can live inside it. Survivors often dream of their abusers as rescuers. Not because they believe it. Because the abuser was the only person who could turn the violence off. When someone controls your body, your money, your movements, your safety, your nervous system clings to them for survival. The brain rewrites the story to feel safe in a cage.
In dreams, the mind tries to resolve what the waking body cannot. Mia’s subconscious turned her abuser into a protector. Not out of delusion. Out of survival. That is not contradiction. That is trauma logic. That is what PTSD looks like behind closed eyelids.
Steel mocked it anyway.
Then he played a birthday video Mia posted years after the rape. A sweet tribute. Music. A message. “Why would you celebrate the anniversary of your rape?” he asked. She said she wasn’t. She was celebrating his birthday. “But the rape happened on his birthday, didn’t it?” he pressed.
Mia explained she was punished whenever she reacted to the violence. Eventually she stopped reacting at all. She said, “Nobody around batted an eye. He was still praised by everyone around him and the public.” She said she was brainwashed.
And she was right. In 2013, while she was still in his orbit, Diddy topped Forbes' list of wealthiest hip-hop artists. He was celebrated for his empire. That same year, he made a surprise appearance at the Country Music Awards, smiling in a tux, handing out trophies on national television. To the public, he was unstoppable. To her, he was inescapable.
She also said, “I have never lied in this courtroom and I never will lie in this courtroom. Everything I said is true.”
Steel kept going. Same tone. Same tactic. He was not asking questions. He was trying to break her in front of twelve strangers. It didn't work. That is when Assistant U.S. Attorney Maurene Comey stood up. “We are crossing the threshold into prejudice and harassing this witness,” she said. She told the judge this was not just legal strategy. This was exactly the kind of attack that keeps victims silent.
Judge Subramanian did not rule it harassment. But he warned Steel to watch his tone. To stop the repetition. The damage was done. The jury had been watching Mia. They saw her hold herself together while unraveling. They saw the shame in her pauses. They saw the violence in what she did not say. They saw a woman try to tell the truth while being punished for surviving it. They saw a man try to use that pain to win.
Their decision will not just shape this trial. It will shape the silence that follows it. This was not cross-examination. This was bad theater. The performance was aimed at silence. And frankly pissed me off.
The Facade Was the Point
While women like Mia and Cassie were being surveilled, isolated, coerced, and violated, Diddy was busy perfecting a global brand. The suits. The jets. The vodka. The legacy talk. He wasn’t just building an empire. He was building camouflage.
Everything was curated. He was the fun one. The party starter. The fashion killer. The hip-hop king who meditated in silk pajamas and talked about Black excellence on Instagram. He made vulnerability look luxurious. He used grief like PR. He branded heartbreak. He sold healing.
And we bought it.
I know I’ve said this before, but I had a crush on him too. I wanted to be one of his girls. I wanted to be on his arm. I wanted to be Cassie. I wanted to be Aubrey O'Day. I just wanted to be in his camp. When I watched Making the Band, I didn’t see abuse. I saw power. I saw ambition. I saw a man who could make you famous overnight if you were pretty enough and loyal enough and quiet enough. That fantasy was intoxicating. For a long time, I didn’t want to look too closely. I didn’t want the truth to ruin the story.
That is how this works.
Because he made it easy to love him. That was the design. His image didn’t just distract people from the violence. It insulated him from it. People don’t question someone they’ve already decided to admire.
And it wasn’t just the public. It was everyone around him. The staff. The collaborators. The executives. He controlled the narrative before the women ever had a chance to speak. He conditioned his inner circle the same way he conditioned his victims. Make him happy, stay in the dream.
And if you did speak out, you were bitter. You were crazy. You wanted money.
That is how psychological abuse scales. It starts behind closed doors. Then it infects the industry. Then it becomes culture. Then it becomes law.
This is not just the story of a man who hurt women.
It is the story of a man who taught millions how to look away.
When Danity Kane fell apart, the public shrugged. Girl groups don’t last. That’s what we told ourselves. But more than that, we thought the other girls were jealous of Dawn. That she was the favorite. That she had Diddy’s ear. That the rest of them just couldn’t handle it. We didn’t question the setup. We blamed the women. We called it cattiness. We called it ego. We called it drama.
What we didn’t ask, what we were never supposed to ask, was what it felt like to be in the orbit of Sean Combs when the cameras weren’t rolling.
D. Woods didn’t ask. She told.
In the 2023 Making the Band documentary, she said his name directly. She talked about the manipulation. The psychological games. The way women were broken down and used for content. The silence they were expected to maintain. You don't have to sell your soul to sell your music, she said in a separate interview. She talked about being forced to compromise her values. About how women in the industry are given impossible choices. Play along or disappear. There’s a machine, she said, and if you go against it, it spits you out.
She didn’t hold back. She said what everyone else was afraid to. She said it with her chest.
And what’s worse, for the fans who grew up on that music, for the women who lived it, is knowing that some of them can’t even listen to those songs anymore. Songs they helped create. Hits they gave their bodies and voices to. It’s not just nostalgia that gets ruined. It’s memory. It’s legacy. That’s what abuse steals. It doesn’t just hurt you in the moment. It rewrites the past.
In another clip, she said, I’m not going to gaslight myself anymore about what I experienced. Her voice was steady, but tired. And by then, the walls were already closing in. Diddy wasn’t untouchable anymore. The lawsuits had started. The stories were coming out. People were finally starting to say the quiet part out loud.
D. Woods saw it for what it was. Long before the raids. Long before the trial. And she tried to warn us.
But no one listens to the girls who walk away.
What He Built To Hide.
They keep asking why the women stayed. Why they smiled. Why they said I love you.
Because they weren’t tied to chairs. They were tied to dreams. To fear. To a man who made them feel chosen, then punished them for believing it.
He tracked their cycles. Controlled their sleep. Threw food. Slammed doors. Filmed them. Stripped them of friends, rest, privacy, voice. Then told them he was their protector.
While they were being broken in private, he was being celebrated in public. Honorary degrees. Champagne toasts. Forbes covers. Met Gala photo ops. He wasn’t hiding the violence. He was dressing it up.
That’s the part people don’t want to admit. That the abuse didn’t contradict the image. It was the image. The power. The control. The performance of perfection while every woman around him was managing for survival.
People ask why they didn’t leave? Because he trained them not to.
He gave them just enough love to keep them close. Just enough fear to keep them quiet. Just enough hope to make them stay
That’s the Diddy design. The LOVE way.
And now that they’re telling the truth, people want to examine their tone. Their timeline. Their text messages. As if survivors have to earn belief by bleeding on cue.
But the stories are already out. The pattern is already visible. The violence is already documented.
So if you're still trying to find a reason not to believe them, or question them. You’re not looking for the truth. You’re looking for an excuse.
He did this. He built this. He got away with it for decades. Because his story wasn’t hard to understand.
It just required looking at someone we were told to admire and finally seeing what was underneath.
Tomorrow could bring another woman to the stand. Or it could be someone from inside the circle. An assistant. A driver. A fixer. Someone who didn’t get hit but saw the bruises. Someone who kept the secrets. Held the cameras. Booked the flights. Cleaned up the mess.
If the government stays on track, they will keep doing what they have been doing. Building the pattern. One detail at a time. One voice after another until the jury doesn’t just hear it. They feel it.
But will they? Honestly, this whole thing feels like it’s moving too fast. Like they’re trying to speedrun justice before anyone looks too closely. The prosecution isn’t asking the questions they should be asking, IMO. The pacing feels weird. Too efficient. Too clean.
It’s giving fast-track to a plea deal. A quiet little sentencing. Maybe house arrest in one of his guest wings. An ankle monitor with ocean views. I don’t want to say it out loud, but I’ll say it here. If they wrap this too quick, it’s because they don’t want us watching for too long. Speculating. The longer this stays in public view, the more cracks show. Not just in Diddy. In everyone who protected him. In everyone who looked the other way. In everyone who still is.
So yeah. We’ll see what happens. But if this ends in a soft landing, just know it was by design.
This is so thorough and thoughtfully written. I am always surprised when lawyers still try to portray victims of rape and abuse as "asking for it". Especially when so many victims have stepped forward and are all corroborating each other's stories.
As someone who escaped an abusive relationship, you capture the psychological aspects of it very well. Violence gets normalized, you shrink yourself to avoid setting him off, you apologize even when you didn’t do anything because anything other than an apology results in more fighting. Mentally you’re exhausted and the only break you get is when you’re on his good side. My family asked me too why didn’t I leave or why I went back. My sisters told me “you let yourself”… it’s really hard how abuse is still not understand well by society and survivors like us are meant to heal in silence and shame.