The Curse of Being Chosen
Cassie Ventura, Baby Reindeer, and the Abuse We Struggle to Recognize
Not all abuse is obvious. It can look like praise. It can look like opportunity. Sometimes, it looks like love.
That’s what makes grooming so hard to pin down and easy to dismiss. It’s also why some people are confused by Cassie Ventura’s story.
At nineteen, Cassie met Sean Combs. He was her boss, her label head, her mentor, and eventually, her boyfriend. According to her lawsuit, she was surveilled, isolated, coerced into drug-fueled sex acts, and physically assaulted. But this isn't only a case of blatant violence. It's one of domination disguised as devotion. It's a portrayal оf how grooming conditions victims for escalating patterns of control and harm.
People were quick to condemn Combs once the hallway video went public. But as the trial continues, the old familiar pattern returns: blame the woman. Question her motives, her choices, her timing. Because to truly grasp the layers of abuse, we have to confront a truth that many still struggle to face: abuse doesn’t always fit neatly into categories. It doesn't always align with how we understand the traditional roles of villain and victim, predator and prey. It can exist in ambiguity. Often, it isn’t immediately noticed or clearly defined.
It's taken me many years to understand the effects being groomed had (and still has) on me. I struggle to articulate it clearly. But I can try...
Being chosen is the oldest trick in the book.
Say what you will about Baby Reindeer, but it did something most shows avoid—it depicted the messy, convoluted truth about abuse. It explored the psychological grey space between victim and perpetrator in the most realistic portrayal I’ve ever seen in mainstream entertainment. The Combs trial has made me think back on Baby Reindeer a lot.
[spoiler alert]
Donny, the protagonist, is hustling to be a professional standup comedian. He's working hard to refine his routine when he meets a comic writer he idolizes. A mentor. Someone who offers him validation and opportunity. Someone who then drugs and rapes him while dangling a writing job in front of him like a golden carrot. The series follows Donny through several different storylines while he comes to terms with the psychological fallout of his trauma. In the last episode, Donny returns to his mentor, back to the man who victimized him. After everything, Donny still wants to work with his abuser. Not because he's pathetic but because he still wants to believe it all meant something. That the validation wasn't fake. That he wasn't just another sad story. If his abuser still sees value in him, maybe the trauma was worth it in some way.
Many viewers were confounded by this. But anyone who has experienced grooming didn't find that moment implausible. Instead, they found it probable. And excruciatingly relatable.
Being chosen is the best feeling in the world.
When you grow up without affirmation, without anyone reinforcing your worth or validating your ambitions, you learn to survive on the fantasy of the future. A time when things will be how you dream they’ll be. You tell yourself that if you are talented enough, pure enough, and driven enough, you will matter. Someone will eventually see you and care.
And when someone finally does, it's life-changing. Especially when it is someone who is admired, respected, and revered.
When that person singles you out and chooses you, it doesn't just feel gratifying; it feels cosmic. Others envy you. They call you lucky. People say it's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be noticed by someone of such stature.
You're told They could have chosen anyone. But they chose you. You must be special.
That's how the hook is set. That's when your worth becomes dependent on someone else. Their approval legitimizes you, and without it, you and all of your hard work and dreams may dissipate into nothing.
And when the abuser is famous and respected, you can't "complain" about anything because everyone is so quick to say they'd kill to be in your position. God forbid you come off as "ungrateful." Combs, like all celebrities, was insulated by sycophants who helped enable this narrative and normalize his behavior. People witnessed Cassie's suffering; yet, they said nothing. That silence was institutional, not incidental.
The grotesque details of her experience are easy to denounce when clearly caught on video. But the coercive control? The grooming? That's where the public loses its moral clarity. Grooming isn't dramatic or obvious. It masquerades as affection and care. Then, it sentences you to a lifetime of confusion and shame. The kind that causes the methodical erosion of self.
Cassie was chosen.
Chosen by a man who flooded her with validation. Who elevated and promoted her. Not out of generosity, but for his own gain. Men like Combs don't stand beside your success, they absorb it. They lay claim to it. They don't want you to thrive without them. And if you dare try, they’ll be the first to tear you down.
I know this pattern too well. When you're young, ambitious and alone in the world, all it takes is one person to say you're brilliant, and suddenly, you see them as a savior. Thus, you overlook the red flags. You contort yourself into whatever shape is required to remain in their orbit (even if that's acting psyched about "freak-offs"). Their belief in you becomes oxygen. Their approval, currency. And when they begin to withdraw it, incrementally and without warning, you chase it harder.
One day, you're their muse. The next, you're a disappointment. A stray comment, like You're nothing without me or I guess you're not as good as I thought you were can gut you. They alternate between praise and punishment, affection and apathy. And even if you begin to see the pattern, you stay. You keep trying to do better. Because you are no longer just trying to regain favor, you are trying to revalidate your entire existence. Because if it was their belief in you that legitimized you, who are you without it?
Combs' attorneys want the jury to hear how Cassie stayed. How she said yes. How she claimed she loved him.
They ask, Why didn't she leave?
Because she wanted a cash-out? Because she didn't want to give up the life of luxury he provided? Because she wanted the spotlight? Because she actually enjoyed being brutalized? (Sound familiar? It’s giving me Evan Rachel Wood vs Manson vibes…)
No. Cassie stayed because she really did love Combs and wanted to make him happy (he groomed her well). She stayed because, early in her life and at the start of her career, he showered her with affection and made her feel truly seen. She stayed because it's nearly impossible to nurture self-respect and self-validation when you're being gas-lit and abused. And most of all, she stayed because she was terrified.
But people like Bill Maher remain skeptical…
The rule should be: if you’re being abused, you gotta leave right away…Tell the police right away. Don't wait a decade. Don't journal about it. Don't turn it into a one-woman show. And most importantly, don't keep fucking him. Your only contemporaneous notes about what he did should be a police report.
- Bill Maher talking about Cassie Ventura on Real Time (his one-man show)
Thank you, Bill, for letting women know how we should and shouldn’t behave after being brutalized. Don’t write about it, don’t make art about it, don’t make it about ourselves. Just file the paperwork ASAP and quietly move on. Ah hem…
Staying was not a weakness. It was human. It was survival. Cassie adapted to the abuse because that’s what happens when you’re a victim of coercive control.
That's what the courtroom cannot measure. The chronology of trauma does not follow legal logic. The texts. The travel records. The so-called consent. The decade-long relationship. None of it fits into society’s preferred narrative of a victim.
It's easier to ask why Cassie stayed than to ask how many of us would've done the same. How many of us still yearn for the approval of the person who broke us? Not because we're weak but because, at a pivotal time in our lives, that person—a parent, a coach, a lover, an idol—made us feel chosen. You can claim that you would have never let it happen to you because you've too much self-respect. Because you don't need to look to others for validation. But unless you are one of those mythical creatures with unwavering self-worth and a childhood free of damage, odds are that you know the ache. If you're an ambitious person or a creative, you know the need to be seen and acknowledged.
Even now, a part of me still looks to the man who groomed me for approval. I deal with a lot of shame because of it. Rage too. Most of me truly doesn't give a fuck about the dude or his opinions. But a tiny sliver of me still does. The part of me who’s forever a little girl. She still wants him to tell her that she's good enough. That she’s talented. That he meant it when he told her he loved her.
c u next tuesday.
XX CARRÉ
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Please excuse the typos in the emailed version of this essay. I didn't have the patience to proof-read today. Whoops.
Very well-said, Carre. It's often the same situation with incest and rape where the victim tends to get blamed for 'enticing' the perpetrator in some way or sending the wrong messages, even in the case of underage and vulnerable kids.
I just started watching the drama The Deuce and you can see the exact same dynamic you described playing out with pimps grooming girls to be prostitutes, the giving and withholding of love and approval to keep the girls shackled and compliant. When that doesn't work, getting the girls hooked on drugs and using violence come into play.
You're pointing in your post to an often invisible but very common level of abuse and control, that of professional validation and reward, and I've certainly been there, done that, paid the price as you have.
Society and the courts need to recognize that abuse is abuse no matter what, and that a power dynamic of some sort is always in play and that people abusing that power must be held accountable, full stop, that's it, end of story.