(CN) — A former WWE employee sued the group’s founder and longtime frontman Vince McMahon on Thursday, accusing him of routine sexual abuse and trafficking her to other employees and talent at the wrestling company.
In the 67-page lawsuit filed in Connecticut federal court, Janel Grant claims her stint as a coordinator in WWE’s legal department “quickly became a nightmare” when McMahon, the company’s CEO, “pushed Ms. Grant for a physical relationship” in exchange for the promise of future employment at the company.
“As McMahon dangled career-making and life-changing promises in front of Ms. Grant, he demonstrated an increasing lack of boundaries,” Grant claims in the suit. “During several meetings that were ostensibly about a potential job at WWE, he greeted her in his underwear, touched her, repeatedly asked for hugs and spent hours sharing intimate details about his personal life.”
Grant claims McMahon pressured her into having sex with him on numerous occasions, which she came to understand as being conditional to her employment.
“She had no idea how sordid it would become, nor how the psychological torture and physical violence would leave her feeling helpless, isolated and trapped,” she says in her complaint.
Mere months into her employment, Grant says McMahon started sharing sexually explicit photographs and videos of her with other employees at the company. Grant included in her lawsuit a number of lengthy explicit text messages she claims to be from McMahon.
“I just passed my phone around to a bunch of guys on the tech crew,” one message read. “They were screaming!!”
Grant claims that McMahon also arranged for her to have sex with other employees, including WWE’s former head of talent relations John Laurinaitis, who is listed as a co-defendant in this case alongside McMahon and WWE.
“McMahon recruited individuals to have sexual relations with Ms. Grant and/or with the two of them, directed Ms. Grant to visit defendant Laurinaitis prior to the start of workdays for sexual encounters, and expected and directed Ms. Grant to engage in sexual activity at WWE headquarters, even during working hours,” Grant claims.
These encounters would often leave Grant with “brutal and painful injuries, including bleeding, swelling, bruising, and spans of incontinence resulting from McMahon’s forceful use of his fists, adult toys, and objects unsafe for vaginal insertion or penetration.”
Grant adds that she was used by McMahon as a “sexual pawn to entice world-famous wrestling talent,” including Brock Lesnar, who isn’t explicitly named in the suit, but is referred to as a “a world-famous athlete and former UFC Heavyweight Champion with whom WWE was actively trying to sign to a new contract.” The Wall Street Journal confirmed that person to be Lesnar on Thursday.
According to the suit, McMahon gave Grant’s personal cellphone number to Lesnar, promising the WWE star that “she’ll do anything” requested of her.
“In the days that followed, [Lesnar] revealed a fetish to Ms. Grant and tested McMahon’s promise that Ms. Grant would ‘do anything’ with a request that she send a video of herself urinating,” Grant said in the suit.
Grant claims that she “went numb and obeyed.” Lesnar reached out later that same month, expressing his desire to “set a play date” with Grant, but she claims she was able to use a snowstorm and the Covid-19 pandemic as “an excuse to back out.”
All the while, McMahon continued to proposition Grant for sex with him, Laurinaitis and other friends of his — often at the same time. Grant says that, during one threesome, “McMahon defecated on Ms. Grant’s head.”
“McMahon left to shower off, but he instructed Ms. Grant to remain in place, with excrement in her hair, and continue performing for his friend,” Grant claims.
It wasn’t until January 2022 that the assaults from McMahon stopped, as did her time as an employee at WWE. Grant says McMahon’s wife had found out about the relationship, and McMahon subsequently fired her and pressured her to sign an NDA “to ensure her silence on, among other things, his personal misconduct.”
Eventually, Grant says she gave in and signed the NDA. She agreed to a $3,000,000 lump sum, which she claims McMahon stopped paying.
“Even after pushing Ms. Grant out of the company and muzzling her with an NDA, McMahon continued efforts to exploit her, including attempting to traffic her to a WWE star who would be in New York City for a live event and TV taping in March 2022,” she says in the complaint.
McMahon stepped down as the chief executive of WWE in 2022 amid an investigation into sexual misconduct and hush-money payments to women like Grant, who accused him of that misconduct. He returned to WWE in January 2023 to lead its merger with the UFC in a deal that formed TKO Group Holdings. McMahon remains executive chairman of the board for TKO Group today.
In a statement to Courthouse News, a spokesperson for TKO Group called Grant's claims "horriffic."
“Mr. McMahon does not control TKO nor does he oversee the day-to-day operations of WWE," the representative said. "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.”
Representatives for WWE did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Grant's wants the NDA voided and seeks compensatory and punitive damages on claims of negligence, civil battery, infliction of emotional distress and violations of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act. She is represented by Benjamin Daniels of the Hartford, Connecticut, law firm Robinson & Cole.
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