Actor Cuba Gooding Jr. pleaded guilty on Thursday to a single count of harassment following a settlement with prosecutors, which spared him any jail time by dropping a criminal case that stemmed from allegations by several women of sexual misconduct.
The second-degree harassment summons, classified as a non-criminal violation under the New York State penal code similar to trespassing, will remain on Gooding’s record, but his guilty plea in April to a more serious criminal misdemeanor of forced touch will be purged, said a spokesperson for the Manhattan District Attorney.
Gooding, 54, was allowed to withdraw his earlier application after prosecutors said in court that they had complied with the terms of their April conditional settlement, remaining in court-ordered alcohol and behavior modification treatment for six months.
As part of his original plea, which resulted from forcibly kissing a woman at a nightclub in September 2018, Gooding also admitted to subjecting two other women to non-consensual physical contact in October 2018 and June 2019.
The Oscar-winning actor, accused of rape in a separate civil lawsuit filed in federal court, is one of several powerful men in Hollywood publicly accused of sexual abuse since allegations against film producer Harvey Weinstein sparked the global movement. #MeToo in 2017. He denied the rape allegations.
One of Gooding’s lawyers, Frank Rothman, told Reuters that Gooding’s request benefits his client by avoiding a criminal record, as well as saving him more time in prison.
“There were three victims that resulted in six counts in one indictment. The charges relating to two of the three were dropped immediately, and the third ended up in a claim of harassment as rape,” Rothman said.
At the time the original settlement was reached in April, Assistant District Attorney Coleen Balbert told the court that the settlement came after “long discussions between the defense, myself and the plaintiff witnesses in this case.”
Balbert said the plea deal would spare the accusers from testifying or facing cross-examination in a trial.
But one of Gooding’s accusers, Kelsey Harbert, expressed outrage at the outcome of the case during an online press conference with her attorney, Gloria Allred.
“I waited three years for the opportunity to speak out about the injustice of Cuba Gooding Jr. I had hoped to do so in the context of a trial in which he would be held responsible for the irreparable harm he did to me one summer night. in 2019,” said Herbert.
Source: CNN Brasil
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