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Vince McMahon, his wife Linda, WWE and WWE’s parent company, TKO Group are all named as defendants in a new lawsuit filed by five former employees who claim they were abused while working for the company in the 1980s.
According to the lawsuit, Vince McMahon and his wife, Linda, “knowingly allowed” ring crew chief and and ringside announcer Melvin Phillips Jr. to groom, exploit, and sexually abuse underaged boys he hired to help set up WWE shows.
“The WWE and McMahons had a responsibility to these underaged boys, and they failed them in the worst way possible,” Mark DiCello, founding partner of the firm DiCello Levitt representing the plaintiffs, said in a statement, Front Office Sports reports. “We will vigorously fight to uncover the truth about this systemic, insidious, and life-altering abuse.”
The lawsuit claims some of the boys that were hired and abused were as young 12- or 13-years-old, who were lured to the arenas with the promise of up-close access to the WWE events.
It states Phillips “lured and manipulated the young boys with promises of meeting famous wrestlers and attending the highly popular wrestling shows, experiences that were otherwise unattainable for these kids.”
It also claims, according to TMZ, that many of the alleged victims were from broken homes, and that that abuse occurred in wrestling venues, in hotel rooms and “in plain sight” – occasionally even in front of wrestlers and other WWE executives.
“Thanks to the bravery of our clients, we finally have a chance to hold accountable those who allowed and enabled the open, rampant sexual abuse of these young boys,” Greg Gutzler, a partner at DiCello Levitt, said in a statement.
Reports of the alleged abuse of underaged boys who worked for WWE was first revealed by Alex Marvez of the Miami Herald in 1992. That report led to an FBI investigation, but no criminal charges were ever filed.
The Miami Herald report did lead to the resignations of Phillips and two other WWE employees, Pat Patterson and Terry Garvin.
Patterson was quickly re-hired after the allegations against him were rescinded and continued to work for WWE until his death in 2020.
Ann Callis, attorney for Janel Grant, who has filed her own lawsuit against Vince McMahon and others who worked for WWE, said about the new lawsuit, “Vince McMahon made sexual abuse and human trafficking a hallmark of WWE’s culture for decades. Survivors like Janel Grant and other former WWE employees deserve their day in court.”