Sharay Hayes is 1.87m tall, rippling with muscles and nicknamed “The Punisher”.
In 2015, working as an exotic dancer at the top of his game, he was described by the New York Post as giving Channing Tatum “a run for his money”.
The Punisher, whose Instagram profile is all abs, leather and chains, partied with some of America’s most beautiful women, hunkiest men and biggest stars.
He never thought that his glamorous lifestyle would lead him to a courtroom, in which jurors would be shown footage of him having sex with the R&B singer Cassie Ventura during the sex trafficking trial of Sean “Diddy” Combs.
On Wednesday, Combs was cleared of racketeering conspiracy, and two counts of sex trafficking. He was convicted on two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution. He denied all charges.
The mogul was accused of intimidating women, including Ventura, into participating in “freak-offs”. A jury decided on Wednesday that this was not the case.
The parties were days-long, drug-fuelled orgies with male escorts, in which participants rubbed baby oil on each other and had sex as Combs watched.
Prosecution lawyers had previously claimed Combs was the “leader of a criminal enterprise”, who “doesn’t take no for an answer”. Combs’ team had argued that he was simply into the swinging lifestyle.
For Hayes, his first entanglement with the music mogul and performer “Diddy” began on the evening of October 14, 2012.
That night, he received a call from a woman named “Janet”, asking for a male dancer to entertain her and some friends, he told the Telegraph.
He packed up and travelled to the Trump International Hotel in midtown Manhattan for the 3am booking.
But when a “stunning woman” with an “inviting smile” greeted him at the door of the suite in nothing but a bathrobe, he soon realised he was walking into an entirely different scenario.
“She immediately explained to me that she was not looking for a dance performance, that she wanted to set up this sexy scene where we would sit on couches adjacent from each other and put baby oil on in a sexy manner, and at some point her husband would come out and watch,” he said.
She handed him $800 in cash – four times the fee he had quoted for a dance – and he agreed, he said.
Hayes has since said he would like to apologise to Ventura for his role in these nights, which she claimed she did not want to take part in. He says he was not aware of this.
Ventura was just 19 when she first met the rapper and was quickly signed to his label, Bad Boy Records. She claims that he pressured her to sleep with other men, sometimes for days at a time, and was physically, financially and psychologically abusive to her.
During the trial, the court heard testimony from the singer in which she claimed she had been pushed to her limits during the sessions, at one point blacking out and waking up in the shower, and also being forced to have sex while suffering from infections.
The court was shown a video of the rapper beating her and dragging her by her hair in a hotel in 2016. She claimed that the CCTV clip was captured as she attempted to leave one of these sessions: “Freak-offs became a job where there was no space to do anything else but to recover and just try to feel normal again.”
Recounting the night he first met Ventura in 2012, Hayes, 51, said after agreeing to take part, he was told to go into the bathroom and take off his clothes and come out nude or in a towel.
The room was dimly lit with candles and the furniture was covered in sheets, which he now realises was to protect it from being damaged by baby oil.
“I was instructed to sit on one single chair that was kind of adjacent to a sofa, she positioned herself on the sofa, and then we began to do the baby oil... I would put it on myself, she’s putting it on herself, we would put [it] on each other, and then there were sexual gestures of self pleasuring and stuff like that to try to set the mood,” he said.
Eventually, Combs, who he believed was Ventura’s husband, and says he did not realise at the time was the A-list musician, came out completely nude, with a niqab covering his face, and sat in a chair around 3.6m to 4.5m away.
“It was very strange, just the idea of understanding a partner would come in was already strange but, seeing his face completely covered, it threw me off,” he said.
Combs would give them directions, Hayes said, mainly based on the lighting and the positioning of their bodies, or if he wanted them to apply more baby oil.
“It was clear that this scene was based on his preference and something that he enjoyed,” he said.
“The scene” lasted around 25 to 35 minutes, and when Combs left the room, Ventura followed.
Five minutes later she returned and told him it had been “perfect”, and asked him if he would like to finish, he says. He declined, and she handed him an extra $1200.
A few months later, Ventura called him again and they carried out the same scenario with the baby oil, but this time had sex.
He would see the couple around eight to 12 times over a two-and-a-half-year period, and would be paid between $1200 to $2000 each time.
Each session would last for a minimum of four hours, he said, with the sexual activity lasting up to 45 minutes.
Sometimes, Combs would leave the room, Ventura would follow, and then they would return and Hayes would be asked to resume.
During one session, when Hayes and Ventura were having intercourse on the bed, Combs “slammed” a stack of hundred-dollar bills down “in approval”, he said.
“[Ventura] kind of looked at him... to gauge was he okay or whatever, and he just says, ‘I’m fine. I like that s---, I’m enjoying this s---.’”
Hayes said he never saw Combs being aggressive towards Ventura, and she did not appear as though she was being forced to take part in the sexual acts.
There were moments she appeared “frustrated” and would sigh, but he said these were in response to Combs’ directions, which could be as specific as telling her to move a candle slightly to the left.
He said he did not discover who the celebrity couple were until around 15 months after their first encounter, when he saw a sign on the television at JW Marriott Essex House saying: “Welcome Mr Sean Combs”.
His final encounter with the couple took place in 2015 after an extended break. Hayes explained he felt uncomfortable and was unable to perform sexually, and they did not call again.
He has since written a self-help book on erectile dysfunction called In Search of Freezer Meat, which included an anonymised passage about the couple.
Hayes said he did not feel used, but felt “special” that this high-profile couple had chosen him.
“Now in hindsight, I know I was one of many and it kind of killed that, burst that bubble, but in the moment I thought it was something to be honoured to be a part of.”
Testifying in court last month was a nerve-racking experience, Hayes said, adding that he was physically shaking when he took the stand.
He avoided eye contact with Combs until the end of his testimony, when they nodded at each other as he left the courtroom.
On Wednesday, Combs was accused, and found guilty of, transporting male escorts across state lines to engage in the “freak-offs”. But he was cleared of the most serious charges.
Initially, Hayes was confused why he had been called to testify, as he did not witness physical abuse and did not travel across state lines for these encounters.
But his role in the case became more apparent when the jury was played videos of “freak-offs”, which Hayes said he was unaware had been filmed.
“I had no idea anything was possibly filmed, so it’s a surprise to me to know that there is video footage,” he said, adding: “It creates a degree of worry.”
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