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Actor Cuba Gooding Jr Pleads Guilty To Forcibly Violating 3 Women Physically

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Actor Cuba Gooding Jr. pleaded guilty on Wednesday, April 13, 2022, to one count of forcible touching in a protracted criminal case accusing the Oscar-winning Jerry Maguire star of violating three different women at various Manhattan night spots in 2018 and 2019.

The single guilty plea came nearly three years after Gooding’s arrest in the case that saw several delays as his lawyers sought to get the charges reduced or dismissed.

Gooding also admitted to subjecting two other women to non-consensual physical contact in October 2018 and June 2019.

‘I apologize for ever making anybody feel inappropriately touched,’ he said in court, according to The New York Times.

The actor will avoid jail time as part of the plea but must continue alcohol and behavior modification treatment he started in 2019 for six more months and have no new arrests.

The case had been scheduled to go to trial at least twice, with an April 2020 trial date scuttled as coronavirus cases surged in New York and the state shut down most court matters due to the pandemic.

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Gooding, 54, was arrested in June 2019 after a 29-year-old woman told police he squeezed her breast without her consent at Magic Hour Rooftop Bar & Lounge near Times Square.

A few months later, he was charged in two additional cases as more women came forward to accuse him of abuse.

The new charges alleged he pinched a server’s buttocks after making a sexually suggestive remark to her at TAO Downtown and forcibly touched a woman inappropriately at the LAVO New York nightclub, both in 2018.

Gooding pleaded guilty to the LAVO nightclub allegation.

Gooding had previously pleaded not guilty to six misdemeanor counts and denied all allegations of wrongdoing.

His lawyers have argued that overzealous prosecutors, caught up in the fervor of the #MeToo movement, are trying to turn ‘commonplace gestures’ or misunderstandings into crimes.

This reared its head during one of the victim impact statements, in which Gooding’s defense attorney called one of the victims ‘delusional’ and frequently interrupted her, according to the New York Daily News.

The judge had ruled that if the Gooding case went to trial, prosecutors could have called two additional women to testify about their allegations that Gooding also violated them.

Those women, whose claims did not result in criminal charges, were among 19 other accusers whom prosecutors were seeking to call as witnesses.

Along with the criminal case, Gooding is accused in a lawsuit of raping a woman in New York City in 2013.

After a judge issued a default judgment in July because Gooding hadn´t responded to the lawsuit, the actor retained a lawyer and is fighting the allegations.

Source: Daily Mail

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