Academy award-winning actor Cuba Gooding Jr. pleaded guilty to one count of forcible touching following multiple allegations from three women in a criminal case.
The 54-year-old actor entered the guilty plea in a case that accused him of inappropriate touching of three different women in Manhattan restaurants and nightclubs in 2018 and 2019, reported Variety.
The “Men of Honor” star will not have to serve any time behind bars as part of his guilty plea. In exchange, Gooding must continue counseling for behavioral and alcohol issues he started back in 2019. If he continues the counseling for six more months with no arrests, he can have the misdemeanor plea reduced to a lesser violation of harassment, reported the Associated Press.
Cuba Gooding Jr. pleaded guilty to one count of forcible touching in a criminal case that accused him of violating three different women at Manhattan nightclubs in 2018 and 2019. https://t.co/YzqSUPN2Hb pic.twitter.com/X7U0Y5g4C8
— Variety (@Variety) April 13, 2022
The plea comes about three years after the “Radio” star was arrested in the case following several delays as Gooding’s attorney tried to get the charges against him reduced or dismissed, reported Yahoo.com.
Gooding reportedly told the judge that he “kissed the waitress on her lips” without consent at the LAVO New York nightclub, the outlet noted.
As the outlet reported:
Gooding was arrested in June 2019 after an incident at a Manhattan club, after which he was released and the trial was delayed several times. A 29-year-old woman told police that Gooding squeezed her breast without her consent at the Magic Hour Rooftop Bar & Lounge near Times Square. After that incident, two more women came forward with accusations of inappropriate touching. One woman, who was a server at TAO Downtown, alleged that Gooding pinched her buttocks at the nightclub in 2018. Another woman claimed that Gooding forcibly touched her inappropriately at the LAVO New York nightclub in 2018.
It was only the LAVO nightclub accusation to which the “Jerry McGuire” star ended up pleading guilty. Gooding previously pleaded not guilty to six other misdemeanor charges and had denied all other accusations. The actor’s attorneys argued that the accusations were trying to turn “commonplace” or misunderstood gestures into crimes.
A total of 20 women reportedly came forward to accuse the actor of groping or forcibly kissing them in allegations dating back two decades, reported The New York Times:
Mr. Gooding had faced a criminal trial on charges of unwanted sexual touching of three women in Manhattan restaurants and nightclubs in 2018 and 2019. The Manhattan district attorney’s office had asked a judge to admit as witnesses 19 other women who it said had come forward to accuse Mr. Gooding of such conduct.
Mr. Gooding’s “prior acts demonstrate that his contacts with their intimate parts are intentional, not accidental, and that he is not mistaken about their lack of consent,” the district attorney’s office wrote in a court filing in October 2019.
The judge ultimately ruled that two of the additional accusers could testify against Mr. Gooding at trial, which would have allowed prosecutors to argue in court that Mr. Gooding had exhibited similar conduct for years.