Three women who claim Cuba Gooding Jr. sexually assaulted them can testify at a federal civil trial on Tuesday to support a woman’s claim that the actor raped her in 2013.
The Oscar-winning “Jerry Maguire” actor allegedly committed a sexual assault on a girl in a Manhattan hotel room after they met at a bar, according to Judge Paul A. Crotty. In a separate decision, he also decided that the plaintiff, known as Jane Doe and who is suing for $6 million in damages, must provide her true identity at trial.
The claims made by the three women who are qualified to testify, according to Mr. Crotty, “are sufficiently similar” to the ones at issue in the trial because “all involve sudden sexual assaults or attempted sexual assaults” connected to Gooding and resulted from their presence in social settings like festivals, bars, nightclubs, and restaurants.
Lawyers for Gooding claim that Mr. Gooding Jr. had met Ms Doe in the VIP area of a Greenwich Village restaurant, where the two agreed to have consensual sex as she followed him to his hotel room.
A fourth woman’s suggested evidence that Gooding touched her breast without her consent in 2011 was rejected by the judge on the grounds that it was too similar to Harbert’s anticipated testimony and would be “needlessly cumulative” and enhance the likelihood of inappropriate prejudice.
In April 2022, the Bronx-born actor accepted a plea deal in his trial on sexual abuse charges before the New York Supreme Court. This allowed him to avoid jail time, compelling him to be under observation for six months, during which he followed a course of support for alcohol addiction.
