(New York) American actor Cuba Gooding Jr will appear on trial in New York in February for allegedly touching three women, the latest episode of the #metoo wave in the entertainment industry in the United States, a- we learned on Monday.
The star of the film Jerry maguire, Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in 1997, was due to be judged in April 2020, but the trial has continued to be postponed due to the pandemic which brought activity to a halt in New York for a year.
A city judge, Curtis Farber, set at 1er The hearings begin next February, Mr. Gooding Jr.’s lawyer, Peter Toumbekis, told AFP.
Since 2019, around 20 women have accused Cuba Gooding Jr., 53, of forced touching or sexual harassment. He has also been the target since August 2020 of a civil complaint from a woman who accuses him of rape in a Manhattan hotel in 2013.
The facts to be tried in February 2022 concern sexual touching against a woman in a New York restaurant in September 2018, against a second in a nightclub in the city the following month and on a third woman in a bar in June 2019 .
The actor rejects all accusations. In theory, he risks imprisonment if he is found guilty.
Cuba Gooding Jr. rose to prominence with the film Boyz’n the Hood (1991) before Jerry Maguire. He recently played OJ Simpson in the miniseries American Crime Story.
The actor joins a list of movie and music stars who have fallen from grace or condemned thanks to the #metoo movement, notably with the fall in 2020 of Hollywood “king” producer Harvey Weinstein, sent for 23 years in jail. Or with the September trial in Brooklyn that found R & B singer R. Kelly guilty of setting up a “system” of sexual exploitation of young women, including minors.