Actor Cuba Gooding Jr. pleaded guilty on Wednesday to one count of groping a woman. The Oscar-winning star of “Jerry Maguire” is accused of abusing three different women in various Manhattan nightspots in 2018 and 2019.
Natasha Ashworth reported in October 2019 that a year earlier, when she worked in a bar, the actor tried several times to touch her ass.
The only guilty plea came nearly three years after Gooding's arrest in the case that experienced several delays as his lawyers sought to have the charges reduced or dismissed. It had been scheduled to go to trial at least twice, with an April 2020 trial date canceled as coronavirus cases in New York increased and the state closed most court matters.
Gooding, 54, was arrested in June 2019 after a woman told police that the American actor touched her chest without her consent at Magic Hour Rooftop Bar & Lounge near Times Square.
A few months later, two other women came forward to accuse him of sexual abuse. The new charges allege that he pinched the buttocks of a waitress after making a sexually suggestive comment to her at TAO Downtown and forcibly touched a woman inappropriately at the LAVO New York nightclub, both in 2018.
The American actor was also accused last August of raping a woman twice on the same day in 2013 at a hotel in New York.
Gooding had previously pleaded not guilty to six counts of misdemeanors and denied all charges against him. His lawyers have argued that overzealous prosecutors, caught up in the fervor of the #MeToo movement, are trying to turn “common gestures” or misunderstandings into sex crimes.
The judge had ruled that if the Gooding case went to trial, prosecutors could have called two more women to testify on their allegations that Gooding also raped them. These women, whose allegations did not lead to criminal charges, were among 19 other accusers whom prosecutors sought to call as witnesses.
Along with the criminal case, Gooding is charged in a lawsuit of raping a woman in New York City in 2013. After a judge issued a default ruling in July because the actor had not responded to the lawsuit, the actor hired a lawyer.
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