A former WWE employee filed a federal lawsuit Thursday accusing founder Vince McMahon and another former executive of serious sex trafficking, including offering her to a star wrestler for sex.
In addition to her own assault, Grant is accusing McMahon of sex trafficking at WWE.
The lawsuit, filed Thursday in a Connecticut federal court, alleges that Grant was hired by McMahon in 2019, after her parents had passed away and she was unemployed. “But what seemed like a dream in the spring of 2019 quickly became a nightmare,” the lawsuit claims.
McMahon stepped down as WWE’s CEO in 2022 amid an investigation into allegations that match those in the lawsuit, which was filed in U.S. District Court in Connecticut, where WWE is based.
A 2022 report in the Wall Street Journal said that McMahon had agreed to pay more than $12 million to four women as hush money for sex trafficking.
Grant alleges that McMahon pushed her for a sexual relationship in exchange for the job, and soon “greeted her in his underwear, touched her, repeatedly asked for hugs, and spent hours sharing intimate details about his personal life.”
Once employed, McMahon allegedly shared explicit photos of Grant with other WWE employees and wrestlers, and “recruited individuals to have sexual relations with Ms. Grant” including WWE employees.
McMahon allegedly demanded that Grant send him explicit photos, and engaged in sexual behavior that the lawsuit claims was aggressive, causing “physical injuries, including bleeding and pain, from forceful use of sex toys.”
McMahon also allegedly named his sex toys after male WWE wrestlers: “[F]or example, a black ‘dildo’ would be named after an African American wrestler and a white ‘dildo’ would be named after a Caucasian wrestler.”
The lawsuit claims the relationship shifted into sex trafficking in 2020, when McMahon allegedly pressured Grant into threesomes with other men, including McMahon’s physical therapist and another WWE executive, John Laurinaitis, who is also named as a defendant in the lawsuit.
“On numerous occasions, Ms. Grant was directed to visit Laurinaitis at his hotel room before work to serve herself to him as his ‘breakfast,'” the lawsuit alleges. “These devastating experiences made Ms. Grant feel as though she were being pimped out as an object for sexual gratification for her new boss.”
The fresh lawsuit comes just days after former wrestler turned Hollywood star Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson was appointed to the board of directors of TKO, the public company that owns the WWE and UFC. TKO announced Johnson’s appointment Tuesday morning.
In addition, the company granted Johnson full ownership of his trademarked in-ring name “The Rock,” with the actor and entrepreneur inking a services and merchandising agreement with the company.
TKO also awarded Johnson a stock award valued at $30 million in connection with the agreement, vesting over time.
