Seven more women have come forward with accounts of unwanted sexual touching by the actor Cuba Gooding Jr. going back to 2003, prosecutors said in court documents, bringing the number of his accusers to 22.
Mr. Gooding, 51, has been charged with groping three of the women at Manhattan restaurants and nightclubs in 2018 and 2019. The other 19 have accused him of unwanted contact; those accusations, which come from several states, have not resulted in charges because, for the most part, they took place too long ago. But prosecutors in Manhattan are hoping to persuade a judge to allow the women to testify.
Prosecutors had previously revealed 12 additional accusers, and in a court filing obtained Monday by The New York Times, they listed seven more. In one accusation detailed in the court filing, a woman said that after she met Mr. Gooding at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, in 2009, he took her to a concert, where he began to kiss her in a secluded hallway as she was attempting to leave.
Mr. Gooding then placed his hands on her buttocks, and pushed onto her crotch so forcefully that her tights ripped, according to the court filing. The woman bit Mr. Gooding’s cheek so she could escape, the filing said.
Another woman accused Mr. Gooding of sliding his hand down her pants and cupping her buttocks at a restaurant in Atlanta in 2011, and a different accuser said that he grabbed her vagina twice at a restaurant in Malibu, Calif., in 2016, according to the court filing. The other four women said Mr. Gooding had groped or kissed them without their consent in Manhattan, Los Angeles and San Francisco, and at a nightclub near the Sundance festival in 2003.
A lawyer for Mr. Gooding, Mark J. Heller, did not immediately provide a response to the new allegations on Monday. Mr. Heller has previously said that Mr. Gooding denied any criminal wrongdoing and that when a celebrity is charged, people often “come out of the woodwork with allegations that are all over the place and, for the most part, aren’t provable.”…….read more
Source: NY Times
