NEW YORK (AP) — Actor Cuba Gooding Jr. had consensual sex with a girl who has accused him of raping her in a New York Metropolis lodge a decade in the past, a lawyer advised a federal decide Monday as a trial on her civil declare was scheduled for June.
Legal professional Gary Becker made the assertion in Manhattan federal courtroom as Decide Paul A. Crotty stated a trial on the claims of a girl recognized solely as Jane Doe can begin the primary week of June, although an actual date was not finalized.
The Oscar-winning actor as soon as burnished a repute as an excellent man in motion pictures together with “Jerry Maguire” and “As Good As It Will get.”
However a slew of harassment claims towards Gooding have turned him right into a #MeToo defendant in a number of courts.
In a prison case in state courtroom in Manhattan final fall, Gooding pleaded guilty to a non-criminal harassment violation in a deal that spared him from jail time.
Authorities say claims of groping, undesirable kissing and different inappropriate conduct by Gooding have been made by not less than 30 ladies, regularly after encounters with him at New York Metropolis nightspots.
The introduction to Jane Doe occurred in August 2013 when she met the actor within the VIP lounge of a restaurant within the Greenwich Village part of Manhattan and agreed to hitch him with a pal of hers at a close-by lodge bar, in accordance with courtroom papers.
However, as soon as on the lodge, and earlier than her pal arrived, Jane Doe was inspired to proceed to Gooding’s lodge room so the actor may change his clothes they usually may return downstairs to satisfy her pal, the courtroom papers stated.
The lawsuit alleged Gooding received violent within the room, pushing the girl onto the mattress and forcibly raping her whereas ignoring her pleas for him to cease.
The girl’s attorneys didn’t instantly remark.
On Monday, Gooding’s lawyer stated the protection at trial would assert that sex was consensual, relying partially on testimony by two former house owners of the restaurant the place she met Gooding who will say she returned late that night to boast that she’d had sex with a celeb.
Outdoors courtroom, Becker and one other protection lawyer, Edward Vincent Sapone, stated {that a} third witness, a former feminine bartender on the restaurant, may additionally testify in regards to the lady’s return to the restaurant and what she stated.
In courtroom papers, attorneys for the girl have stated she is entitled to $2 million in compensatory damages and $4 million in punitive damages for the “important emotional misery” she suffered after assembly Gooding.
The attorneys wrote that she started binge consuming after the assault, has felt suicidal at occasions and has confronted flashbacks that make her very anxious, alongside with emotions of worthlessness, mistrust and low self worth.
“To at the present time, it’s tough for her to say the phrase ‘rape’ because it brings upon her an intense quantity of disgrace,” her attorneys wrote in a July 2021 courtroom submitting.