Cuba Gooding Jr. Walks Free After Guilty Plea In Sexual Abuse Case
Cuba Gooding Jr. will not face any jail time after making a plea deal over sexual abuse charges.
In spite the sexual abuse allegations that has been made against Cuba Gooding Jr., the Oscar-winner will face no jail time. As reported by Deadline, after Gooding pled guilty to a “noncriminal harassment violation” today he will not have to deal with any further criminal penalties over the matter. The news comes after Gooding reached a plea deal with the prosecution in April which initially reduced the charges down the misdemeanor “Forcible Touching.”
The first, but not the last, allegations made against Cuba Gooding Jr. arose in 2019 when he was accused of touching a woman’s breast in the rooftop bar of a Manhattan hotel. By the following August, a total of 30 women came forward to claim the actor had sexually abused them. Among them was a woman whose name has not been released that alleges Gooding raped her in 2013.
When the plea deal was first reached, Gloria Allred–the lawyer for the unnamed 2013 victim–released a statement, expressing her disappointment in the deal and her intent to pursue a civil case against Cuba Gooding Jr. at the federal level. According to NPR, Gooding failed to respond to the lawsuit, prompting the judge issue a default judgment.
In a post-#MeToo environment, career-wise Cuba Gooding Jr. is either proof that cancel culture isn’t real, or simply that #MeToo wasn’t enough. In spite of multiple allegations aimed at the Jerry Maguire star, his upcoming production schedule looks pretty busy. The year after the first allegations arose, he appeared in the romantic drama Life in a Year, though production on the film began before the accusations.
Still, since the charges were made against him, Cuba Gooding Jr. hasn’t been hurting for work. He’ll be appearing in the upcoming series Paper Empire as the director of the CIA. His co-stars in the series include Robert Davi (The Goonies), Wesley Snipes (Blade), Kelsey Grammer (Frasier), Denise Richards (Starship Troopers), Helena Mattsson (Iron Man 2), Anne Archer (Fatal Attraction), Robert Knepper (Prison Break), and Steve Guttenberg (Police Academy).
He’s likewise been cast in the upcoming action flick Irrationale and the horror film Skeletons in the Closet. In the latter film, he’ll appear alongside Terrence Howard (Iron Man), Udo Kier (Hunters), and Clifton Powell (Ray). Cuba Gooding Jr. has fielded so many ugly allegations while staying attached to so many projects, you’d think he was playing The Flash.
Cuba Gooding Jr. first rose to prominence after landing the lead role in the 1991 Oscar-nominated coming of age drama Boyz n the Hood. He managed to snag his own Best Supporting Actor Oscar as the cocky pro football player Rod Tidwell in 1996’s Jerry Maguire, in which he and co-star Tom Cruise helped make the phrase “Show me the money” iconic. In spite of some memorable turns over the years in films like What Dreams May Come, Outbreak, and A Few Good Men; he never managed to solidify a leading man career.
