WWE Updates : When Vince McMahon was the CEO of the wrestling entertainment company, a former employee of WWE sued him, claiming he had sexually harassed and mistreated her. She also claimed McMahon had trafficked her to other men “as a pawn to secure talent deals” with potential wrestlers the firm was hiring.
Janel Grant, a former employee of WWE, filed a lawsuit on Thursday in U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut, naming McMahon, WWE, and John Laurinaitis, the former head of talent relations, as defendants.
According to the lawsuit, McMahon, Laurinaitis, and WWE violated the Trafficking Victims Prevention Act. Additionally, Grant claims she was subjected to years of sexual and emotional abuse while working for WWE, which includes allegations of civil battery and intentional infliction of mental distress. The lawsuit requests a declaration that a nondisclosure agreement Grant signed while working for WWE is “void and unenforceable, and does not bar any of Plaintiff’s claims against Defendants McMahon and WWE,” in addition to unspecified monetary penalties. You can click this link to view a copy of the lawsuit.
A request for comment was not immediately answered by representatives for McMahon or WWE.
In a statement, a representative for TKO Group Holdings—the business that owns both WWE and the UFC—said, “Mr. McMahon does not control TKO nor do he oversee the day-to-day operations of WWE.” We take Ms. Grant’s horrifying accusations extremely seriously and are handling this internally, even though it predates the term of our TKO management team at the firm.
Two days after TKO signed a 10-year, $500 million-a-year contract with Netflix for WWE’s “Monday Night Raw,” the complaint was launched. This marked a major increase in fees for the business. (Netflix representatives did not immediately reply to a request for information regarding the complaint.) TKO Group also revealed that Dwayne Johnson has become a member of its board and that Johnson acquired ownership of the moniker “The Rock,” which is a trademark.
In June 2022, McMahon announced his resignation as CEO of WWE, following a board probe into claims he had paid women hush money to cover up his alleged sexual misconduct. The firm revealed that McMahon, in his capacity as CEO of WWE, paid out a total of $19.6 million for suspected misbehavior beginning in 2007. WWE paid McMahon $17.4 million in March 2023 to cover the costs of looking into allegations of wrongdoing against him.
In January 2023, McMahon rejoined the firm as executive chairman to spearhead the sale of WWE, which had combined with UFC the previous year to form TKO Group Holdings, a publicly traded entity that was arranged through an Endeavor-engineered arrangement. In September 2023, McMahon was appointed executive chairman of the board of TKO Group. After the UFC and WWE merged, McMahon sold almost $670 million worth of TKO stock in November. According to a regulatory filing, the stock he sold makes up around 30% of the 28 million TKO shares that McMahon had previously owned.
In according with Grant’s lawsuit, McMahon and Laurinaitis sexually assaulted and trafficked Grant “both for their own pleasure and as a pawn to secure talent deals with prospective wrestlers they were recruiting” while on WWE premises and using money from the company.Per the lawsuit, McMahon “repeatedly groomed Ms. Grant sexually for the purpose of trafficking to those same people by using sex toys named after other WWE employees, wrestlers, and performers.”
Additionally, the lawsuit claims that McMahon “would shower Ms. Grant with gifts and empty work promotions, while at the same time threatening her livelihood and her reputation if she wouldn’t give in to his increasingly depraved sexual demands, including engaging in sex acts with other people and disseminating pornography of Ms. Grant to ‘thousands’ of people.” Workers at WWE, some of whom were total strangers.
Grant “was abruptly pressured to resign from the WWE and forced to sign an NDA days before a major financial deadline for the organization under the guise that Mr. McMahon would ‘protect her’ financially and reputationally, and pay her $3 million,” according to the lawsuit, after McMahon’s wife found out about his relationship with Grant. But later on, Mr. McMahon declined to pay Ms. Grant, allegedly on the grounds that she had given material to the media, as per the lawsuit. In February 2022, McMahon sent Grant $1 million, but the complaint claims that McMahon “failed to make any further payments.”
Grant’s claim states that she met McMahon in March 2019 while residing in the same apartment complex. “After succumbing to the pressure for a physical relationship, Ms. Grant was slotted into an entry-level position as a ‘administrator-coordinator’ — a position McMahon created for her in WWE’s legal department,” the complaint said in June of that year. Grant was moved by McMahon to the talent relations division in March 2021, where he would be under Laurinaitis’ supervision.
When McMahon was the CEO of WWE and Grant worked as an entry-level coordinator in the legal department, McMahon “expected and directed Ms. Grant to have sexual encounters with Defendant Laurinaitis prior to the start of workdays, and recruited individuals to have sexual relations with Ms. Grant and/or with the two of them.” Permit to participate in sexual activities at the WWE headquarters, even in the course of business hours,” the lawsuit states.
On May 9, 2020, “he defecated on Ms. Grant during a threesome, and then commanded her to continue pleasuring his ‘friend’ — with feces in her hair and running down her back — while McMahon went to the bathroom to shower off,” the lawsuit claims, citing this as an example of McMahon’s “extreme depravity.”
The complaint states that in June 2021, in WWE’s Stamford, Connecticut, headquarters, McMahon and Laurinaitis “sexually assaulted Ms. Grant inside Laurinaitis’ office.” The lawsuit claims that “the two men cornered her behind a locked door, pulled her in between them, touched her forcibly, and finally put her on top of a table in between them.” “She begged them to stop, but they insisted on holding her against her will and saying things like, ‘No means yes,’ and ‘Take it, bitch.'”
“Today’s complaint seeks to hold accountable two WWE executives who sexually assaulted and trafficked Plaintiff Janel Grant, as well as the organization that facilitated or turned a blind eye to the abuse and then swept it under the rug,” said Ann Callis, Grant’s attorney, in a statement. She is a very brave and modest individual who has endured great suffering at the hands of Mr. McMahon and Mr. Laurinaitis. Ms. Grant is hoping that by suing, she will stop other women from being mistreated. The company should accept accountability for the wrongdoing of its officials as they are well aware of Mr. McMahon’s history of immoral behavior.
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