Being associated with Disney doesn’t make you as wholesome as the company’s image. In fact, it generally opens your character open up to further speculation. It’s been a decade since Cuba Gooding Jr. starred in The Walt Disney Company’s family features, and it seems he has fallen far from grace. Today, Gooding Jr. settled a lawsuit from a woman accusing him of rape JUST before it was set to go to federal court this morning.
Cuba Gooding Jr. has settled a lawsuit accusing him of rape just before the case was set for trial. https://t.co/Z0VAjIB0Po
— Variety (@Variety) June 6, 2023
The star of the now nostalgic Snow Dogs (2002) and the voice of Buck in Home on the Range (2004) faced rape charges in 2020 from a woman he interacted with back in 2013. Variety reports that the lawsuit highlighted an incident occurring in a New York City hotel room between Cuba Gooding Jr. and the complainant. Apparently, after meeting at a Greenwich Village lounge, Gooding asked her and her friend to continue the night at the SoHo Mercer Hotel for drinks.
He was staying at this hotel and invited the woman up to his room. He told her that he needed to change his clothes, but the accuser claims that she insisted on leaving when he began to undress in front of her. When she tried to exit the room to meet her friend downstairs, Cuba Gooding Jr. supposedly stopped her, forced her onto the bed, and aggressively shoved his hands under her dress against her explicit wishes. The woman says Gooding Jr. then raped her as she continued to beg him to stop.
Cuba Gooding Jr. and his legal representation vehemently denied the claims saying, “We never received the complaint, but the allegations are completely false and perjurious. The contentions that he acted inappropriately in the complaint are completely inappropriate and untruthful.”
Variety also noted that Gooding pleaded guilty to the criminal forcible touching of three separate women in 2018 and 2019. The crimes took place in New York City nightclubs. Cuba Gooding Jr.’s plea deal in these cases kept him out of jail.
He has settled the 2017 incident out of court, though the lack of trial does not assert Gooding Jr.’s innocence.