(New York) American actor Cuba Gooding Jr has admitted to having kissed a waitress forcibly, his lawyer said on Wednesday, as part of a settlement in a New York court that will see other criminal complaints against him dropped.
Posted at 7:45 p.m.
Featured by jerry maguire and Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in 1997, the 54-year-old actor has been accused by more than 20 women of sexual assault over several decades. He was prosecuted after complaints from three of them.
His lawyer, Frank Rothman, told AFP his client had accepted a plea bargain on one of the charges.
“He admitted to one count that he kissed a waitress without her consent,” Rothman said. “All other charges have been dismissed,” he added.
“In six months, if he stays out of trouble, this charge will be dropped and he won’t have a criminal record at the end of all this,” he said.
Attorney Gloria Allred, who is representing the unidentified woman in a civil suit, said requests for other alleged victims to testify in the case – on the grounds that they were the subject of similar behavior – had been rejected by the judge.
She assured that her firm would continue “to litigate our civil case against Cuba Gooding Jr. in federal court in New York on behalf of our courageous client”, and that she hoped “for a just result in the context of this complaint”. .
Cuba Gooding Jr. made a name for himself with the film Boyz’n the Hood, the law of the street (1991) before jerry maguire. He recently played OJ Simpson in the miniseries American Crime Story.
The actor joins a list of movie or music stars who have fallen out of favor or been condemned in the wake of the #metoo movement, notably with the fall in 2020 of Hollywood “king” producer Harvey Weinstein, sent for 23 years in prison, or with the trial that found R & B singer R. Kelly guilty of having set up a “system” of sexual exploitation of young women, including minors.