June Civil Rape Trial Begins for Cuba Gooding Jr. in New York

On Monday, a New York judge set a June trial date for Cuba Gooding Jr.’s $6 million civil rape case.

Manhattan Federal Court Judge Paul Crotty ordered Gooding and his anonymous accuser, referred to in court documents as Jane Doe, to be ready to begin trial within the first week of June.

Doe claims Gooding raped her twice at the Mercer Hotel on August 24, 2013 after inviting her and a friend to his room when they met in the Greenwich Village restaurant VIP room.

Doe’s lawyers wanted to go to trial in 2024 due to scheduling conflicts.

“We are not postponing this for a year,” Crotty said in court.

Gary Becker, the lawyer for the Boyz n the Hood actor, told the court that the incident was consensual and that Doe was “just lying.”

Lawyers for the actor said they plan to call two former owners of Le Souk, the now-closed bar where Dow and Gooding first met, and a female bartender. Becker claimed that Doe “bragged” to bar staff that he had slept with a celebrity after the alleged attack.

Lawyers for Gooding in court demanded a copy of the police report Doe said she filed after she hired her lawyers and accused her of making it up during her testimony last year.

Doe’s lawyer Gloria Allred declined to comment when asked about the charge.

The federal lawsuit alleges that when Doe met Gooding at his hotel, he asked her to come upstairs while he “quickly” changed before they met up with her friend. Dow claims that Gooding stripped as soon as they got to his room, started playing Mumford & Sons on the audio system, and wouldn’t let her leave.

The complaint says that Doe repeatedly told Gooding she wasn’t interested and tried to push his hands away as he forcibly groped her breasts and vagina. She claims he pushed her onto the bed, “aggressively removed” her underwear and raped her without a condom.

She says he raped her for the second time in a row after he went to the bathroom.

Doe claims that she left as soon as Gooding fell asleep and returned to meet her friend. She is suing Gooding under New York’s Gender-Based Defense Act for $2 million in damages and $4 million in punitive damages.

The civil case against the 55-year-old “Jerry Maguire” actor, who did not attend Monday’s hearing, is gaining momentum four months after his criminal case ended in what many of his accusers called a slap in the face.

In October, the actor faced the only violation of harassment in his June 2019 criminal case under the terms of a plea deal that allowed him to trade his previous guilty plea for a violent touch that erased his criminal record.

The criminal case was initiated on the basis of the statements of three accusers. The plea deal required Gooding to admit to groping the two of them in 2018 and 2019, not pleading guilty to the relevant charges but apologizing on the court record, in exchange for attending therapy and not being arrested for six months.

At one stage in the case, prosecutors from the Manhattan District Attorney’s office said they had contact with at least 22 women who allege that Gooding forcibly kissed them, groped them, sexually assaulted them, and threatened them with professional ruin, leading to his sex crime count. . up to 30 accusers.

Crotty in September 2021 overturned a default judgment he had previously issued in a federal lawsuit in Dow’s favor, on the grounds that Gooding had allegedly ignored the lawsuit. The judge found that there were good reasons to overturn the judgment and ordered Gooding to pay Dow $7,500 in attorneys’ fees.

One of the victims in the criminal case won a lawsuit against Gooding in Manhattan Supreme Court last year when he refused to acknowledge the lawsuit.

Outside the courtroom Monday, Gooding’s lawyer Edward Sapone said his client has “a lot of faith” in the system “and can’t wait for his day in court.”