Cuba Gooding Jr pleads guilty to forcible touching
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NEW YORK • American actor Cuba Gooding Jr, who had been accused by more than 20 women of groping or forcibly kissing them in encounters that dated back more than two decades, pleaded guilty in Manhattan on Wednesday to one count of forcible touching.
The count, a misdemeanour, charged that he had forcibly kissed a woman at a nightclub in Manhattan in 2018.
Under terms of the plea, Gooding, 54, must continue for six more months in alcohol and behaviour modification treatment that he has been undergoing since 2019, and he must have no new arrests, the Manhattan district attorney's office said.
If he fulfils the terms of the plea, he can withdraw it and plead to a lesser charge of harassment, a violation, with a sentence of time served, the office said. If he does not comply with the terms of his deal, the misdemeanour guilty plea will stand and he can face up to a year in jail.
Gooding was originally charged in connection with an encounter on June 9, 2019, during a party at the Magic Hour Rooftop Bar, an expensive lounge at the Moxy NYC Times Square hotel in Manhattan.
He was later charged with pinching a woman's bottom at a Manhattan nightclub in October 2018 and with an additional incident at Lavo, an Italian restaurant on East 58th Street, in September 2018 - the episode to which he pleaded guilty.
One of the accusers - the woman in the incident at the hotel in 2019 - addressed the court on Wednesday.
The woman, who identified herself as Kelsey Harbert, said it was "very devastating" to her that Gooding would have the chance to "move on" after six months, while she has experienced continuing feelings of trauma and violation as a result of her contact with him.
Gooding, a Bronx native, had his first major success playing the lead role in the 1991 film Boyz N The Hood, and he won an Academy Award in 1997 for his supporting role in Jerry Maguire (1996).
He played former American football star O.J. Simpson, who was acquitted of the murder of his ex-wife and a friend in 1995, in the 2016 television series The People V O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story.
NYTIMES