What's Cuba Gooding Jr. up to these days? Well, there's Red Tails — and, according to three women in New Mexico, a whole lot of groping. The women say he harassed all of them at Maloney's Tavern in Albuquerque — and they have pictures.
Sara (all the women I talked to asked that their last names not be used) told me:
At about midnight on March 1st, Cuba Gooding Jr. waltzed into the bar we were at and proceeded to sexually harass a number of the [women there] and assault (punch) a [man] for attempting to take a picture of Cuba receiving a lap dance. [...] The sexual harassment occurred when women would be taking pictures with him; he would grab butt cheeks during the picture taking and when women reacted negatively to that, he would proceed to either touch women's breasts or tell them that he "loved them." He told me that he loved me because his wife's name is also Sara. Classy.
She added, "I have pictures of him reaching to grope my breast..."
"... as well as pictures of my friend jumping on his back in anger after he twisted her nipples."
Her friend Meagan told me that Gooding grabbed her ass, and confirmed that he tried to grab Sara's chest. She also said that after leaving the area, they ran into him again on the dance floor, where he grabbed Meagan's breast and pinched her nipple. She said he was repeatedly bothering and harassing women even after they told him to stop.
A third woman, Molly, says,
Cuba Gooding Jr. came into Maloney's Pub in Albuquerque on March 1st, and the bar was fairly crowded at the time. No one seemed to notice or realize who he was when he first entered, and he inappropriately touched [Sara] and she immediately dismissed him. Someone then recognized him and swarms of people started crowding around him to take pictures. Sara and I took a picture with him, and he attempted to grab her breasts in the process. Later on the night, he came up to me, grabbed my face, and kissed my cheek. He asked where I was staying and told me I would be staying with him tonight, making lewd comments about his plans to sleep with me that night. He mentioned that he his happily married with three kids, but "not tonight." He also said I was "probably like 12" years old (I am actually 23 years old). I also witnessed him inappropriately touching a friend of mine, [Meagan], which caused her to be extremely upset. Another woman in the bar gave him a lap dance and when a man tried to take a picture, Gooding grabbed the phone, threatening to "break it in half," and followed him to the bathroom, where he apparently punched him.
The three weren't the only ones to put Gooding in Albuqueurque on the night of March 1. New Mexico entertainment site One Headlight Ink has a photo of the actor at the city's Library Bar & Grill, dated that day. Gooding's also apparently been making the rounds in other places — New York-based Maggie Montgomery recently tweeted, "Just got hit on by Cuba Gooding Jr...my goodness" (she hasn't responded to requests for elaboration). And he's no stranger to carousing at bars in Western cities — here he is giving a somewhat slurred speech at a bar in Spokane, WA in 2010. He opens with a rousing "show me the money," a catchphrase that by that point was fourteen years old.
Gooding's rep said she hadn't yet been able to reach him for comment, because he's filming. The manager of Maloney's Tavern (which is noted on Yelp for its "stench") did not return my calls, so I wasn't able to get his take on his celebrity patron's alleged behavior. Sara, for her part, said she'd like to "warn the general public about [Gooding's] disgusting creepiness." Consider yourself warned.