New York Daily News

Actor Cuba hit with new sex charges

- BY SHAYNA JACOBS AND LEONARD GREENE

New misdemeano­r sex assault charges have been filed against actor Cuba Gooding Jr., according to court records.

The Academy Award-winning actor was already facing four misdemeano­r sexual misconduct counts involving two women on separate occasions. It’s not clear if the new misdemeano­r counts involve the same two women.

Prosecutor­s have said there were up to a dozen more women waiting in the wings to testify at his trial that the star either groped them or forcibly kissed them. Gooding hasn’t been charged with any wrongdoing in connection with those accusers, officials said.

Last week, Gooding, 51, was charged with forcible touching and third-degree sexual abuse in one case. That charge came months after a groping charge filed.

Gooding (inset) was indicted by a grand jury in connection with the two incidents, including a June episode at the Magic Hour Rooftop Bar for which he was previously arrested.

The accuser in the first incident was a 29-year-old bar patron at the Times Squarearea hangout who told cops Gooding squeezed her breast and pawed at her chest while visibly drunk on June 9. Video of the alleged crime at Magic Hour was obtained by investigat­ors. Gooding’s lawyers say it exonerates him because it does not actually show contact.

The woman from the bar has also filed a lawsuit against the “Jerry Maguire” star.

Gooding has denied all the accusation­s and charges.

The district attorney’s office detailed a series of raunchy and unwanted sexual overtures to women at parties and nightclubs beginning in 2001.

In 2011, he forced his hand up the blouse of a woman at a Los Angeles bar and squeezed her breast, asking her to “sit on my face, pee in my mouth,” the document says. was

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