NYC strip club hires Cuba Gooding Jr. to host event after he pleaded guilty to groping a woman

NYC strip club hires Cuba Gooding Jr. to host event just weeks after he pleaded guilty to groping woman at nightclub in 2018

Cuba Gooding Jr. was hired to host an event at the New York City’s Sapphire Gentlemen’s Club just weeks after he pleaded guilty to groping a woman in 2018
Gooding admitted to groping a woman at the LAVO nightclub in 2018, as well as inappropriately touching two others at NYC night spots
Kelsey Harbert, one of the accusers, said the actor grabbed her breasts and thighs when he was drunk at the Magic Hour Rooftop Bar & Lounge in 2019
Gooding avoid jail time with the plea deal but must continue alcohol and behavior modification treatment he began after the 2019 incident
Gooding, who faced allegations from 19 others, is also fighting a lawsuit claiming that he raped a woman at a NYC hotel in 2013

By Ronny Reyes and Stephen M. Lepore For Dailymail.Com

Published: 10:56 EDT, 23 April 2022 | Updated: 10:59 EDT, 23 April 2022

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A New York strip club has hired Cuba Gooding Jr. to host an event just weeks after the actor admitted groping three women at Manhattan night spots.

The Selma star cut a no-jail deal with prosecutors on April 13 for groping a woman at the LAVO nightclub in 2018. Gooding, 54, also admitted to grabbing a 29-year-old woman’s breasts at the Magic Hour Rooftop Bar & Lounge in 2019 and pinching a server’s buttocks at the TAO Downtown club in 2018.

The actor avoided jail time as part of the plea but must continue alcohol and behavior modification treatment he started in 2019 for six more months and have no new arrests.

But the Hollywood actor is already back on the Manhattan club scene after agreeing to host an event at the Sapphire Gentlemen’s Club, a strip club just five minutes away from where one of the groping incidents took place, Page Six reported.

The Sapphire Gentlemen’s Club did not immediately respond to DailyMail.com’s request for comment.

Cuba Gooding Jr. (left) was hired to host an event at the New York City’s Sapphire Gentlemen’s Club just weeks after he pleaded guilty to groping a woman in 2018

The Sapphire Gentlemen’s Club, in Times Square, is just five minutes away from the LAVO nightclub, where Gooding admitted to gropping a woman

Gooding also admitted to inappropriately touching Kelsey Harbert, 29, at the Magic Hour Rooftop Bar & Lounge, near Times Square. Pictured, Gooding grabbing Harbert’s breast

Gooding admitted his guilt in court on April 13, saying, ‘I apologize for ever making anybody feel inappropriately touched,’ according to The New York Times.

He had been arrested in June 2019 following the incident at the Magic Hour Rooftop Bar & Lounge, near Time Square, with his two other accusers pressing charges a few months later.

The woman from Lavo incident in 2018 claimed Gooding kissed her while she worked as a server at the club, grabbing her neck and touching her tooth with his lips as she tried to pull him away.

Kelsey Harbert, the woman from the 2019 incident, said Gooding had grabbed her breast when she brought him a glass of water because he was so drunk.

‘I was mortified,’ she told the court. ‘My body was being placed under the dominion of someone else without my consent.’

Surveillance video at the time captured the moment Gooding was at the club with his girlfriend, Claudine De Niro, when he began touching Harbert.

Gooding had placed his hand on the accuser’s left thigh, and moments later, he ran his right hand up her torso and touched her breast.

When Harbet pushed his hand away, Gooding then pulled her hand toward his mouth and kissed it.

She told the Times that she was disappointed over the plea deal Gooding struck with prosecutors.

Surveillance cameras at the Magic Hour Rooftop Bar & Lounge the captured the moment Gooding was at the club with his girlfriend, Claudine De Niro

The actor then gropped Harbert’s breast. When she pushed his hand away, he pulled it close to his mouth and kissed it. Harbert said the actor was drunk at the time

Gooding admitted his guilt in court on April 13, saying, ‘I apologize for ever making anybody feel inappropriately touched.’ A total of 22 women have made allegations against him

The prosecutors alleged that 19 other victims had come forward since Gooding’s arrest, accusing the actor of also touching them without their consent.

Gooding’s lawyers have argued that overzealous prosecutors, caught up in the fervor of the #MeToo movement, were trying to turn ‘commonplace gestures’ or misunderstandings into crimes.

Gooding was also accused in a lawsuit of raping a woman in a New York City hotel in 2013.

Famed women’s rights lawyer Gloria Allred, 80, who is representing the woman in the lawsuit will proceed with a pending $6million civil lawsuit filed in 2020.

After a judge issued a default judgment last July because Gooding hadn’t responded to the lawsuit, the actor retained a lawyer and is fighting the allegations.

Allred also issued a statement decrying a New York State Supreme Court judge’s decision not to allow Gooding’s 19 alleged victims, two of whom she represented, to testify against him during pre-trial hearings for admissibility of evidence.

Gooding (pictured leaving the courthouse after the guilty plea) avoided jail time as part of the plea but must continue alcohol and behavior modification treatment he started in 2019

Famed women’s rights lawyer Gloria Allred, 80, issued a statement decrying a New York State Supreme Court judge’s decision not to allow 19 alleged victims to testify against Gooding Jr., 54, during pre-trial hearings for admissibility of evidence

‘Unfortunately, however, the judge refused to allow the testimony of any of the Molineux witnesses, which the prosecutor wanted to be able to call as witnesses if this case went to trial. That was a significant setback for the prosecution,’ Allred said, according to Deadline.

‘Justice was significantly delayed in this case for many reasons, and I do not feel that justice was achieved today with the entry of this plea, although I do understand why under the circumstances that the prosecution offered a plea,’ the statement added.

‘My law firm … will continue to litigate our civil case against Cuba Gooding, Jr. in Federal court in New York on behalf of our brave client.’

Allred, who has handled numerous high-profile cases and represented Jeffrey Epstein’s and Bill Cosby’s victims, said she hopes the civil case yields a just result after criminal proceedings against the Hollywood star proved to be unsatisfactory.

THE CHARGES AND ALLEGATIONS

June 2019 – 2 counts; forcible touching and sexual abuse

Gooding Jr. has been charged with forcible touching and third degree sexual abuse – both misdemeanors – for allegedly touching a woman’s breast at the Magic Hour Rooftop in Manhattan this June. He denies it.

October 2018 – 2 counts; forcible touching and sexual abuse

The grand jury indictment is connected to a different incident, in October last year at Tao nightclub in Manhattan.

For that incident, he is charged with forcible touching and third degree sexual abuse.

September 2018: Two misdemeanor charges relating to an incident in New York City

Papers filed by prosecutors on Tuesday also describe 12 other incidents over which he has not been charged but which prosecutors think constitute misconduct. They include:

1) A 2001 incident at the W Hotel where he approached a woman he had never met and ‘rubbed his groin and pelvis against her buttocks while simultaneously grabbed her buttocks and breast with his hand’.

2) A 2003 incident at the Yard House in Long Beach where he allegedly put his hand on another woman’s buttocks and ‘squeezed it’ while they had a photo taken together. He then told her: ‘You’ve got a good piece of a**’

3) A 2006 incident at Chi, a bar in Hollywood, where he approached a woman from behind and ‘bit her shoulder, on her bare back’ twice, then ‘thrust his pelvis’ against her leg and ‘attempted to lift the bottom of her shirt up’

4) A 2007 incident at the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas where, at a ‘movie related event’, ‘forcibly pulled’ a woman towards him and ‘attempted to kiss her’ after calling her and her friends over to his table. He then allegedly ‘licked’ her face and ‘grabbed her buttocks’

The next night, he allegedly grabbed the same woman and placed his tongue against her closed lips

5) An incident at Butter, a now closed nightclub in Manhattan, sometime between 2007 and 2008 where he allegedly grabbed another woman’s buttocks and ‘squeezed’ it as she walked through a crowd

6) An incident in 2011 at a bar in Los Angeles where he allegedly placed his hand inside a woman’s blouse and ‘squeezed her bare breast’ and told her: ‘sit on my face and pee in my mouth’

7) An October 2011 incident at Sfuzzi’s in Dallas, Texas, where he allegedly grabbed a woman’s buttocks and ‘rubbed’ them

8) A November 2013 incident at the Chatwal Hotel in New York where he ‘grabbed a woman’s buttocks and licked her neck’

9) A 2014 incident at Cafe Havana in Malibu where he ‘reached under a woman’s skirt and touched her vagina over her underwear’

10) A 2015 incident at Nobu, Malibu, where he ‘attempted to kiss’ a woman then bit her shoulder. When she argued with him, he allegedly called her a ‘c**t’ and a ‘b***h’.

11) An incident ‘approximately five years ago’ at Burt’s Tiki Lounge in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where he ‘grabbed a woman’s buttocks’ then told her to stop smoking cigarettes.

12) On August 16, 2018, at the Shore Bar in Santa Monica, told a woman: ‘Damn, you’re hot’, asked if she was married then asked her to lean in closer to him where her proceeded to ‘grab her buttocks and breast and forcibly kissed her, inserting his tongue into her mouth’

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