The unidentified woman said the incident occurred in Gooding’s New York City hotel room after meeting the actor at a Greenwich Village lounge. He invited her and the accuser’s friend for drinks at The Mercer Hotel in SoHo, where he was staying, and asked her up to his room, when the two arrived there together, so he could change his clothes.
According to the suit, the woman insisted on leaving the room to meet her friend downstairs once he began to undress in front of her. Gooding allegedly blocked the door, pushed her onto the bed and touched her inappropriately without consent.
“Plaintiff was wearing a halter top dress that evening,” the suit reads. “Defendant finished taking off his clothes (he was now completely naked) and forcibly and without consent put one hand in her halter top to touch Plaintiff’s breasts and one hand up her dress.”
The suit claims he then allegedly raped the woman vaginally and anally, despite repeated pleas for him to stop.
Gooding’s attorney, Mark Jay Heller, denied the claims against his client.
“We never received the complaint, but the allegations are completely false and perjurious,” he told Variety. “The contentions that he acted inappropriately in the complaint are completely inappropriate and untruthful.”
The woman is suing Gooding for a “crime of violence” committed on the basis of gender, asserting a claim under the New York City Victims of Gender-Motivated Violence Protection Act. She’s seeking a jury trial, as well as unspecified compensatory and punitive damages.
Gooding, who won an Academy Award for his role in “Jerry Maguire,” is already facing six counts of sexual abuse and forcible touching. He pleaded not guilty in 2019 to charges of groping three different women in incidents at New York City nightclubs the prior year.
