A female former employee of World Wrestling Entertainment filed a federal lawsuit against the company and its founder Vince McMahon on Thursday, accusing the billionaire of sexual assault and trafficking, among other allegations.
The woman, Janel Grant, had previously signed a non-disclosure agreement with McMahon reportedly worth $3 million. In Thursday’s complaint, which was filed in Connecticut district court, she said she accepted the agreement under duress. She is asking the court to declare the NDA null under the federal Trafficking Victims Protection Act and other statutes.
In a statement, a spokesperson for McMahon said, “This lawsuit is replete with lies, obscene made-up instances that never occurred, and a vindictive distortion of the truth. He will vigorously defend himself.” Neither WWE nor its parent company, TKO Group Holdings, could immediately be reached for comment.
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In her complaint, Grant presents a harrowing timeline of her relationship with McMahon. She said the pair met in the spring of 2019, when Grant was grief-stricken following the death of her parents, who had required years of “around-the-clock caregiving.” Moreover, “she was unemployed and her family home was lost in her parents’ bankruptcy,” she said.
McMahon lived in a penthouse at the top of her building, Grant added, and a member of the building’s staff asked the WWE executive if he might be able to help. “Hell Yes!!” he allegedly replied.
At first, they developed a platonic relationship, she said; the billionaire checked in on her and gave her VIP wrestling tickets. But the situation “quickly became a nightmare,” she recalled.
Grant claims McMahon started behaving inappropriately. “During several meetings that were ostensibly about a potential job at WWE,” her filing alleged, “he greeted her in his underwear, touched her, repeatedly asked for hugs, and spent hours sharing intimate details about his personal life.”
Grant said she felt pressure to commence an intimate relationship, and that once she did, she was given an entry level job in the WWE legal department in June 2019. Later, she was transferred to the talent relations division, allegedly because “her presence in the legal department was effectively delaying efforts to hire a new General Counsel for the company.”
Grant’s new boss, she said, was another longtime WWE exec, John Laurinaitis, whom she also named as a defendant.
Grant said she tried to end her relationship with McMahon, even though “she came to understand that McMahon expected the physical relationship to continue as part of her employment.”
By 2020, she said, McMahon had begun sharing graphic photos and videos of her with people “both inside and outside the company,” including an unidentified UFC Heavyweight Champion that WWE was attempting to recruit.
Grant further alleges that McMahon, who was then WWE’s CEO, “recruited individuals to have sexual relations with Ms. Grant and/or with the two of them, directed Ms. Grant to visit [Laurinaitis] prior to the start of workdays for sexual encounters, and expected and directed Ms. Grant to engage in sexual activity at the WWE headquarters, even during working hours.”
Grant claims that, in one particularly disturbing scene from 2020, McMahon defecated on her during a threesome “and then commanded her to continue pleasuring his ‘friend.’”
She said the series of incidents left her physically and emotionally “crippled” and that she was eventually terminated from her job ”due to her inability to leave her home for weeks at a time.”
Following media reports about its workplace culture, including a 2022 Wall Street Journal story about McMahon’s alleged “hush money” scandal, the company said it would form a special committee to investigate the matter. Stephanie McMahon, Vince’s daughter, was also appointed interim CEO and interim chairwoman.
In truth, Grant alleges, the WWE was simply trying to “sweep the matter under the rug.” In fact, she said, the company completed its investigation in the fall of 2022, but it “never even bothered to interview Ms. Grant or request any documents despite Ms. Grant stating that she would cooperate.”
