When “Yes” Isn’t a Choice — How courts misread coercion as consent.
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Pick Any Door, Just Know He Built the House
“She wanted to stay, she could have left so many times!”—These are the claims legal analyst Bernarda Villalona quoted while covering Ventura’s case for Eyewitness News, not representing her own view, but to illustrate the dominant public narrative. In legal settings, such statements frequently shape how courts and juries assess agency, credibility, and consent. They influence how victim testimony is received, how intent is interpreted, and how responsibility is distributed. This post addresses that narrative by examining the socio-psychological mechanics of coercion—showing how power constrains agency, and why consent cannot be meaningfully assessed without context.
In 2009, Cassie messaged Sean Combs saying she was “ready to freak off” for him anytime. The phrase has been used to suggest that her participation in what she later described as abusive and degrading sexual acts was voluntary. However, consent is not a one-time grant of permission that carries forward indefinitely. Legally and ethically, it is understood as a contextual, ongoing process—one that must be freely given, informed, and subject to withdrawal at any point. A single message, especially one sent years before the alleged abuse took place, cannot serve as enduring consent for subsequent acts that may have taken place under conditions of coercion, intimidation, or psychological manipulation.
The response to withdrawn consent often reveals whether the original agreement was freely given. In Ventura’s case, video footage reportedly shows what happened when Ventura was no longer ‘ready’ and tried to leave one of those ‘freak offs’. Combs throws her to the ground, kicks her, shouts at her, and as she lies on the floor, he drags her back into the room she had just tried to escape. Physical violence wasn’t his only weapon. He allegedly recorded sex acts without her consent and later used the footage to threaten her, promising to release it if she didn’t comply. By that point, every meaningful resource Ventura had—economic, social, reputational—was under his control. The threat she faced wasn’t abstract; it was immediate, personal, and enforceable. When refusal carries the risk of retaliation, humiliation, or reputational harm, can agreement still be considered voluntary, or does it reflect coerced compliance?
The Illusion of Choice: How Coercion Orchestrates Consent
When coercion is involved, victims are rarely held in place by physical force alone. More often, they are bound by a carefully constructed system of dependency, fear, and distorted alternatives. The perpetrator doesn’t eliminate choice; they manipulate it. And once the available “options” are shaped by survival instinct, emotional captivity, or perceived risk, the resulting decisions may look voluntary from the outside but are deeply constrained from within.
Content retrieved from: https://www.psychologytoday.com/nz/blog/psychology-in-the-courtroom/202510/when-yes-isnt-a-choice.
