Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - 'Psychological Torture': WWE's Vince McMahon Hit with Disturbing Rape, Sex Trafficking Claims in New Lawsuit

Episode Date: January 26, 2024

Janel Grant, a former staffer at WWE, filed a federal lawsuit claiming the wrestling titan forced her to participate in degrading sex acts and tried to traffic her to other men after she left the company. McMahon denied the allegations in a statement. Grant's suit includes sexually charged text messages she said McMahon sent to her. Law&Crime's Angenette Levy talks with Grant's lawyer, Ann Callis, in this episode of Crime Fix — a daily show that delves into the biggest cases in crime.HOST:Angenette Levy: twitter.com/Angenette5CRIME FIX PRODUCTION:Head of Social Media, YouTube - Bobby SzokeSocial Media Management - Vanessa BeinVideo Editing - Daniel CamachoAudio Editing - Brad MaybeGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSTAY UP-TO-DATE WITH THE LAW&CRIME NETWORK:Watch Law&Crime Network on YouTubeTV: https://bit.ly/3td2e3yWhere To Watch Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3akxLK5Sign Up For Law&Crime's Daily Newsletter: https://bit.ly/LawandCrimeNewsletterRead Fascinating Articles From Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3td2IqoLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@LawandCrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this law and crimes series ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Where the hell have you been? WWE founder Vince McMahon accused of rape and sex trafficking in a new lawsuit filed by a former employee who says she endured psychological torture and physical abuse. We have five shocking claims from the suit, and the accuser's lawyer is here. I'm Ann Jeanette Levy. It's Friday, and this is Crime Fix. WWE, its founder Vince McMahon and John Laurianatis,

are facing a civil suit from a woman named Janelle Grant. The suit includes graphic descriptions of sex, including threesomes and text messages Grant claims McMahon sent to her. Grant's suit claims she was down on her luck after her family died and needed a job and someone in her apartment building reached out to McMahon asking him to help her. They met in March of 2019, according to the lawsuit. She says McMahon spoke to her about a job, greeted her in his underwear, touched and hugged her, and talked about his personal life. She claims McMahon pushed for

a romantic relationship in exchange for a job at WWE and she obliged. Grant claims McMahon made her have sex with him, John Laurianitis, and others. And sometimes this actually happened during work hours. Ann Callis represents Janelle Grant, and she's here with me to discuss this lawsuit. Ann, thanks for joining us. I want to talk about some of the allegations and the claims in this lawsuit, which are frankly pretty disgusting and pretty disturbing. First off, this claim that there was a threesome between your client, Janelle Grant, and Vince McMahon in May of 2020. And she's saying that Vince McMahon defecated on her, would not allow her to clean off. It's very descriptive and that he insisted that she continue to, you know,

have sexual relations with the third person in this threesome and that this was humiliating. So these are some really graphic kind of disturbing claims. Talk to me a little bit about that and why your client continued to engage in all of this. Well, there is a thing called trauma bonding that people that haven't studied it, and I have just read articles about it. I'm no psychologist or psychiatrist, but an attorney. But she literally felt caged and imprisoned by Vince McMahon. And the degrading, the escalation of the degrading things that happened to her,

it's important for it to come out. These are facts. And these are allegations that we hope to prove to be true. And they are true. So what does Janelle Grant hope to accomplish with this lawsuit? You know, she had filed or she had signed the NDA, the non-disclosure agreement. It was supposed to be paid about $2 million over the course of a couple of years. So what does she want out of this suit specifically? She wants her life back.

She wants ownership of her story. She wants to help other victims. This is relatively close in time, 2019 when this unfolded, 2020. And her hope is to help other victims, if there are other victims, to come forward because she had the courage and the presence of mind to finally get this done and come forward. What is she up to right now? You know, obviously she's not working for WWE and Vince McMahon anymore. That employment ended.

So has she been able to find other gainful employment? I mean, what is she doing right now? Well, what happened to her and what we allege left her physically and mentally absolutely destroyed. So she is trying to recover and she believes this is the first step. Filing this lawsuit took such tremendous courage from her. She was in an extremely vulnerable position when she first encountered Vince McMahon. Her parents had passed. She was the primary caregiver for her parents.

So already, besides being an inordinately uneven playing field between Vince McMahon and Jan janelle our client uh she still tried to conduct herself tried to be the best possible employee for the wwe that she could be under the most devastating and sexually depraved circumstances. One of the other claims that she makes that's pretty disturbing, I mean, it's all pretty disturbing if you ask me, is that in 2021, she claims that Vince McMahon and this John Laurianitis, sorry if I butchered that name, cornered her in a conference room and they both had sex with her. And they're saying things like no means yes and take it B word.

Yeah. And that she's claiming other people in the office knew about this. So I'm just, I'm kind of stunned by by that i mean it was this like an office was this like an like a just a known thing i mean was everybody just like yeah that's that's kind of what goes on around here i mean what's going on with all of this stuff this is really really um disturbing it is disturbing what happened to her is disturbing. And I believe it was in Laurinaitis' office that they locked. I believe that. But yes, she was sexually assaulted, we are claiming, in the WWE headquarters, under the nose of the executives and the employees. So it's just an open secret in the office or how was this working? Because I think it's horrifying to me to think about this.

It is horrifying. But Janelle was in just an atmosphere of fear. I think perhaps some of the employees or many of the employees were in an atmosphere of fear and that permeated her being. And I think it permeated the office, the entire headquarters. So does she believe and do you believe that she was not the only one, that this was going on potentially with other women who worked in this company. Whether they worked in the company or not, yes, the belief is that there are other victims out there. Just the way that the grooming of Janelle went on,

it just indicates that there are a lot of indicators that there may be and probably are other victims out there. And one of Janelle's hopes is that by coming forward, she will give the courage of other victims to come forward too. Does she potentially know of other employees personally, maybe people she had interacted with while she was there who who empirical circumstances that might, that she may have encountered that could have indicated that there were other victims. But personally, one-on-one, she doesn't have direct knowledge. Okay. You know, there was also mentioned, or you show them, I should say, in the suit. There are these text messages where he's messaging her. This is purportedly Vince McMahon saying, hey, this guy wants to do this.

And I'm not going to get into the verbiage. It's not how I talk. It might be how other people talk. But wanting people wanting to have their way with her sexually. She's claiming, you know, that basically he was trafficking her to other people, like kind of loaning her out, if you will. I don't even know if that's the proper term, but that's kind of what it sounds like. And she was like, yeah, next week or let me rest up, stuff like that. So you have the text messages.

Is there other evidence you have to support these claims? Because that's a pretty vivid thing. Well, we have her firsthand testimony and gathering all the evidence. Are there other text messages out there? Are there? Uh, yes, I think we're, this was just the complaint. Um, but now we are building, um, the pool of evidence that we will present to a jury. Now, she's saying, too, or you say in the lawsuit and she claims that Vince McMahon told her in January of 2022 that his wife, Linda McMahon, who's a very well-known personality in her own right, found out about this relationship. So it was going to have to end. She was told she had to sign an NDA. She would no

longer be working for WWE. You attach the NDA as an exhibit to this lawsuit. And she agreed to not say anything in exchange for being paid $2 million. So what happens with that NDA now? Well, it was attached to our complaint, so we're trying to invalidate it pursuant to the law. WWE just signed a big deal with Netflix. Wrestling, of course, is big, big business. Vince McMahon actually stepped down as CEO of WWE back in 2022 after similar allegations were made against him. A spokesperson for McMahon released a statement saying that Janelle Grant's lawsuit is, quote, replete with lies and he's vowing to defend himself. At the time of this recording, we hadn't heard back on our request for a comment from John

Laurianitis. So, you know, it's the whole thing is really really uh creepy you know i we did get a statement from them from wwe and it says mr mcmahon does not control tko nor does he oversee the day-to-day operations of wwe well that just happened really in the last year and a half or so uh 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. Have they reached out to you at all? I mean, they're at least acknowledging this. And OK.

What is your response to their statement? I believe that we were at least Janelle was fine with the fact that they did acknowledge that what happened to her was horrific. You talked a lot in the beginning of our conversation or you mentioned grooming. And so there's a mention in the lawsuit as well. And it's a pretty lengthy lawsuit that she she was given gifts. I mean, she was kind of showered with gifts, cashmere sweaters and spa days and things like that. Looking back on all of this, does she feel like she was, I don't know, she obviously feels, it said psychological torture and abuse.

I mean, does she feel like she was just targeted and preyed upon because of her situation? She couldn't find work. She, she meets this guy who's very powerful and, um, well, yeah, things unfold from there. Right. She, she was targeted and preyed upon. And, um, she, as I mentioned before, she was in a very vulnerable position. And Vince McMahon took advantage of that and then took it a million steps further in the sexual torture, the degradation, the push-pull of trauma bonding all occurred to her. And she's still, to this day, trying to process what happened to her. She literally could not get out of bed.

She wasn't, had any personal grooming. She's not really eating. It's really taken a toll. Besides the physical injuries she'd suffered, it's going to be a long process but hopefully yesterday by filing the suit is her first step in in the healing process and you told me that there's something that janelle wanted you to read on her behalf she has a statement could you tell us what it says that she hopes any doors of secrecy have been blown off their hinges and that fresh air fills the headquarters. And she hopes those at the company, past and present, who fear

speaking out about harm is a thing of the past. She wishes everyone peace. Ann Callis, attorney for Janelle Grant, thank you so much. We'll continue to follow the lawsuit and see how it unfolds from here. All right. Thank you so much. And that's it for Crime Fix on this Friday, January 26, 2024. I'm Anne Jeanette Levy. Thanks so much for being with us. We'll see you back here on Monday. Until then, have a great weekend. You can download Crime Fix on Apple, Spotify, Google, and wherever else you get your favorite podcasts and new episodes post each weeknight at 6 Eastern time on Law and Crime's YouTube channel. Daniel Camacho does our video editing. Our head of social media is Bobby

Zoki. Our senior director of social media is Vanessa Vine. Savannah Williamson is one of our producers. Diane Kay and Alyssa Fisher book our guests. And Brad Mabey is our audio editor.