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Cuba Gooding Jr.'s rape accuser cites E. Jean Carroll's case in opposition to Trump, saying different alleged victims ought to testify

  • Cuba Gooding Jr. is about to face a civil trial subsequent month over a rape allegation. 
  • His accuser desires a choose to permit 4 different ladies testify about being sexually assaulted by Gooding Jr. 
  • The actor’s legal professionals say the ladies’s tales aren’t comparable sufficient to be allowed at trial.

Cuba Gooding Jr.’s rape accuser is preventing to get a choose to permit 4 different ladies who say they have been additionally sexually assaulted by the actor to testify at his upcoming trial. If she’s victorious, she’ll have E. Jean Carroll to thank.

An nameless girl, known as Jane Doe in courtroom paperwork, is suing Gooding Jr. for gender-motivated violence, claiming the actor raped her in a New York Metropolis lodge room in August 2020. Gooding Jr. has denied the allegation and a trial is scheduled for subsequent month in Manhattan federal courtroom. 

In courtroom filings on Tuesday, either side made their arguments on whether or not or not the 4 different ladies who’ve accused Gooding Jr. of sexual misconduct needs to be allowed to take the stand. 

Kelsey Harbert, Remona Biddle-Jackson, Shannon Lunsford, and an nameless fourth girl — recognized in courtroom paperwork as Jane Doe #2 — all declare that Gooding Jr. inappropriately touched them in public locations.

Jane Doe’s legal professionals closely cite the case regulation in E. Jean Carroll’s not too long ago profitable defamation and battery lawsuit in opposition to former President Donald Trump as foundation for why the 4 ladies ought to get to inform their tales. 

Carroll’s lawsuit stemmed from the declare that Trump raped Carroll in a Bergdorf Goodman altering room within the mid-Nineties. The choose allowed two different ladies to testify within the case about experiencing comparable habits from Trump. Natasha Stoynoff testified about Trump forcibly kissing her at Mar-a-Lago, and Jessica Leeds mentioned Trump sexually assaulted her on a flight from Texas to New York.

However Gooding Jr.’s legal professionals mentioned that on this case, the tales of the plaintiff and the 4 different ladies aren’t comparable sufficient to warrant the others testifying. 

Gooding Jr.’s legal professionals says one of many large variations between Doe’s declare and the opposite 4 ladies’s claims is that Doe says she was attacked in personal, whereas the opposite encounters with the opposite ladies occurred in public areas. 

“Although Plaintiff and Defendant unquestionably met, drank, and flirted with each other in a public downtown bar and lounge, Plaintiff has not alleged that Defendant ever touched her inappropriately whereas they have been out in public,” Gooding Jr.’s legal professionals wrote. 

Doe’s legal professionals countered that argument in courtroom filings on Monday, drawing particular consideration to the choose’s ruling in Carroll, which downplayed the variations in location for the three alleged assaults by Trump — on an airplane, in his residence, and in a division retailer — and gave extra weight to the frequent theme the three ladies reported. In every of these instances, Trump was accused of immediately getting sexually aggressive after conferences that have been at first pleasant and benign. 

“Find similarity adequate to permit each ladies to testify, the courtroom emphasised that ‘[i]n every case, the alleged sufferer claims that [the defendant] immediately attacked her sexually,’ and minimized the truth that one was accomplished in personal whereas the opposite was accomplished in public,” Doe’s legal professionals wrote on Monday. “The identical circumstances exist right here.”

The trial is about to start out eight months after Gooding Jr. pleaded responsible to a misdemeanor rely of forcible touching in Manhattan legal courtroom, and was handed down a sentence that allowed him to evade any jail time. 

That case was primarily based on allegations that he inappropriately touched three ladies at new York nightclubs in 2018 and 2019, in keeping with the Manhattan District Lawyer’s Workplace.