Hollywood actor Cuba Gooding Jr settles rape lawsuit days before civil trial was due to begin

Actor Cuba Gooding Jr has settled a civil lawsuit against him in which he was accused of raping a woman in New York City in 2013.

The lawsuit was due to begin within a few days, with jury selection due to begin on Tuesday 6 June at 10am local time. The civil trial in Manhattan was expected to include testimony against the actor. 

Gooding Jr has faced multiple accusations of indecent behaviour over the past few years. Last year, he pleaded guilty to kissing a woman without her consent. He avoided keeping a criminal record and was able to downgrade his guilty plea to a non-criminal harassment violation after completing a six month course of alcohol and behaviour counselling and staying out of trouble with police. Warning: this article includes descriptions of sexual assault.

The civil trial centred around the accusations made by an unknown Jane Doe, who claimed that Gooding Jr, who was described in the lawsuit filing as a man accused of committing sexual misconduct against 30 women, had raped her after inviting her to his hotel room. Her anonymity was waived by Judge Paul A Crotty, who ruled last week that she would have to be named in the trial. 

The woman claimed that she met the Jerry Maguire actor at a restaurant before going with him back to her hotel, The Mercer Hotel in Soho, New York. She then claimed that he told her he needed to change and proceeded to undress in front of her. 

Gooding Jr is then accused of blocking her from leaving the room, pushing her onto the bed and “aggressively” removing her underwear before proceeding to forcibly have sex with her. His lawyers called the allegations “completely false and defamatory” and said the encounter was consensual, with the women allegedly bragging having sex with a celebrity soon after.

The woman pursuing the civil lawsuit had been seeking $6million in damages. 

The settlement, the terms of which has not been disclosed, comes after the judge permitted the testimony of other accusers to be heard as part of the trial. Although the separate allegations due to be heard in the testimony were not included in the lawsuit itself, the judge said that they would be allowed to be heard because they were “sufficiently similar” to the lawsuit allegations. 

One of the women due to give testimony was Kelsey Harbet. Harbet had accused the actor of touching her without her consent at a New York bar in 2019.