Hollywood star Cuba Gooding Jr has admitted forcibly touching a woman at a New York nightclub in 2018.
The guilty plea, in which the 54-year-old also admitted in court to subjecting two other women to “non-consensual physical contact” in 2018 and 2019, came three years after he was arrested.
Under the plea agreement, if Gooding continues to undergo court-ordered counseling for six months, he can withdraw his misdemeanor plea and plead guilty to a lesser violation of harassment.
Failure to comply would leave him facing up to one year in jail.
The actor had been accused of violating three different women at various Manhattan night spots.
He pleaded guilty to the most serious count charging him with forcibly kissing a woman at a nightclub in September 2018, a district attorney spokesperson said.
“I apologise for ever making anybody feel inappropriately touched,” the New York Times quoted Gooding as saying in court when entering his guilty plea.
Gooding won the Academy Award as best supporting actor for his role in the 1996 romantic comedy Jerry Maguire. Two decades later, he portrayed OJ Simpson in the TV miniseries The People v. OJ Simpson.
Hours after the plea, a Manhattan federal judge rejected Gooding’s bid to dismiss a $6 million civil lawsuit by a woman who said the actor raped her twice in 2013 at the Mercer hotel in Manhattan’s SoHo district.
US District Judge Paul Crotty said the woman did not take too long to sue by waiting until 2020 to invoke a New York City law protecting victims of gender-motivated violence.
Gooding said a different law with a one-year statute of limitations should have applied. He has denied his accuser’s allegations.
