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A former World Wrestling Entertainment employee sued Vince McMahon, WWE’s longtime chairman and CEO, in federal court on Thursday, accusing him of physical and emotional abuse, sexual assault and trafficking.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Connecticut, alleges that McMahon, who was the subject of an internal investigation in 2022 over allegations of misconduct, sexually exploited and trafficked former employee Janel Grant, 2019. to 2022. Another WWE executive, John Laurinaitis and the company itself are also listed as defendants.
McMahon also pressured Grant to sign a confidentiality agreement, the suit says, in which he agreed to pay her $3 million in exchange for not discussing their relationship.
The lawsuit seeks to void the confidentiality agreement. It also seeks unspecified amounts in punitive damages and legal fees. Ann Callis, Grant’s attorney, declined to comment on the lawsuit Thursday.
Mrs. Grant’s complaint, which was previously reported by The Wall Street Journalincludes graphic descriptions of sexual acts, threats and intimidation that she says she faced for several years as McMahon, 78, gained control over her professional and personal life and wielded that power to abuse her psychologically and sexually.
When Ms. Grant met Mr. McMahon in 2019, the complaint says, her parents had recently died and she was unemployed. Mutual friends suggested she contact Mr. McMahon about a possible job with WWE. When the two met, Mr. McMahon greeted her by wearing only her underwear, according to the complaint.
After promising him a position of power and a high salary within WWE, McMahon finally offered Grant an entry-level position on the company’s legal staff in June 2019, in exchange for sex, according to the lawsuit.
Ms. Grant “felt trapped in an impossible situation,” the complaint says, “submitting to McMahon’s sexual demands or facing ruin.”
Once he was working at WWE headquarters in Stamford, Connecticut, the abuse intensified, the lawsuit says. McMahon took nude photos of her and filmed them having sex, the complaint says. He showed her photos and videos to other employees of hers and then used them to intimidate her and force her to remain silent, according to the complaint.
The relationship became increasingly violent and coercive, according to the lawsuit. McMahon pressured Grant to have sexual relationships with other people, the complaint says, including the other executive named as a defendant, Laurinaitis. In one episode described in the lawsuit, Ms. Grant says that Mr. McMahon and Mr. Laurinaitis locked her in an office and took turns raping her.
In 2022, McMahon told Ms. Grant that his wife had found out about their relationship and that “Ms. Grant’s time in WWE had come to an end,” the lawsuit says, and he began pressuring her. Ms. Grant to sign a confidentiality agreement to ensure her silence. In exchange, McMahon promised him $3 million, the complaint says. He paid the first $1 million but made no further payments, according to the lawsuit.
But the sexual coercion continued until March 2022, two months after McMahon signed the confidentiality agreement, according to the complaint, which mentions McMahon’s business negotiations with a person described in the complaint as a “WWE Superstar.” To persuade the wrestler to sign a new contract with WWE, McMahon offered Grant sex as “part of the deal,” according to a screenshot of a text message included in the lawsuit.
Ms. Grant’s lawsuit says the abuse she suffered at the hands of Mr. McMahon and others has caused her “debilitating” post-traumatic stress disorder and suicidal thoughts. When she was forced to leave WWE, she got a job in the operations department of her apartment building. She lost that job, according to her lawsuit, because persistent trauma of hers prevented her from leaving her home “for weeks at a time.”
Mr. McMahon’s lawyers could not be reached for comment Thursday. WWE parent company TKO Group said in a statement: “Mr. McMahon does not control TKO or oversee the day-to-day operations of WWE. “While this matter predates our TKO executive team’s tenure at the company, we take Ms. Grant’s horrific allegations very seriously and are addressing this matter internally.”
The legal action raises new questions about the 2022 investigation by a special committee of the WWE board of directors into Mr. McMahon’s conduct. Investigators discovered that Mr. McMahon had spent $14.6 million between 2006 and 2022 on payments to women that she had accused him of sexual misconduct and that the payments should have been recorded as business expenses. An additional investigation by the company found that Mr. McMahon had made additional payments totaling $5 million to two other women.
The board’s investigative committee “did not even bother to interview” Ms. Grant, according to her lawsuit, which describes the investigation as a “sham.”
Jeff Speed, who led the investigation as a board member, described it as exhaustive and emphasized that McMahon had “publicly left the company” while it proceeded.
“I remain confident in our investigation, which included communication with Ms. Grant and collaboration with her attorney,” Speed said in an email sent Thursday by Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP, the law firm hired to represent the committee.
Mr. Speed, who left the WWE board of directors in 2023He added that he acknowledged “the horrific nature of the allegations” in the lawsuit but was “not at liberty to comment on what was and was not known during our investigation.”
McMahon temporarily resigned from the company during the investigation, although he remained “a shareholder with a controlling interest,” according to the company’s quarterly filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission in August 2023. In another filing with the SEC, WWE revealed that Federal investigators had executed a search warrant and had subpoenaed Mr. McMahon. Federal law enforcement and regulatory agencies also demanded that the company turn over documents.
No criminal charges were brought against Mr. McMahon, who denied “any intentional wrongdoing.” in a statement last year. He agreed to reimburse the company for the cost of the investigation and returned to run WWE in early 2023.
Shortly after his return, McMahon negotiated a deal to sell the company to Endeavor Group, owner of the UFC mixed martial arts league. McMahon retained 28 million shares of the combined company, now called TKO Group, which also includes the CEO.