In the Netflix’s docu-series Mr. McMahon, Vince McMahon has denied he ever raped former WWE referee Rita Chatterton in 1992.
In it he says: “When you’re accused of this and accused of that, and there’s this deluge of things, ‘You’re this, you’re that.’ One of the things was an alleged rape, that never happened. Once you’re accused of rape, you’re a rapist. It was consensual, and actually, had it been a rape, the statute of limitations had run out. It’s all kind of crap like that, that people are digging up and trying to find something on you.”
Chatterton received a settlement from the WWE and McMahon for $11.75 million in damages in 2023. In an appearance on Geraldo Rivera’s talk show Now It Can Be Told in 1992 Chatterton claimed McMahon raped her in his limousine. No charges were ever brought against McMahon and no investigation was ever launched.
Former WWE superstar Mario Mancini (Leonard Inzitari) publicly supported Chatterton’s claims saying that nobody spoke up at the time because they were fearful that McMahon himself would blackball them from the industry, they would lose their jobs.
Intelligencer reporter and author of Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America,
wrote.“Lenny, he took his penis out,” he said Chatterton told him between sobs. “He kinda forced my head down there, and I made it known I wasn’t interested in doing that.”
“Then, [Vince] pulled me on top of him,” she told her friend. According to her, she was wearing jeans that McMahon forcibly took off. Soon, as Inzitari puts it, “He was inside her.”
“One of the things that sticks with me, and always will,” she tells me, “was, after he got done doing his business, he looked at me and said, ‘Remember when I told you not to mess with any of the wrestlers? Well, you just did.’”
Jerry McDevitt, a lawyer for Mr. McMahon, told the Wall Street Journal that: “Mr. McMahon denies and always has denied raping Ms. Chatterton. And he settled the case solely to avoid the cost of litigation.”
Chatterton is recognized as the WWE’s first female referee working for the WWE in the 1980s as Rita Marie.
RELATED LINKS
- Sep. 23, 2024: Vince McMahon comments on upcoming Netflix documentary
- Aug. 29, 2024: Vince McMahon documentary to debut in September
- Jan. 19, 2023: Settlement in McMahon-Chatterton suit
- June 27, 2022: New details surface in McMahon rape allegations
- McMahon family story archive