Amid continuing fallout over the Dallas Mavericks’ sexual misconduct scandal, owner Mark Cuban is now the subject of a resurfaced sexual assault allegation surrounding a 2011 incident in a Portland, Oregon nightclub. The disturbing claims surfaced in the Willamette Week, which reported on a 50-page police report about the allegation that Cuban had penetrated a woman with his finger during a photo op. Cuban denied the accusation and was never prosecuted due to lack of evidence, but the NBA, it seems, is not letting the matter slide.
ESPN passes on word from NBA spokesperson Mike Bass, who reveals that the league is reviewing the allegations from the Week‘s report, and a new witness has also come forward to shine more light on that night in Portland’s Barrel Room nightclub. The Oregonian spoke with a security worker named Christopher White, who was present on that 2011 evening and claims that Cuban was so drunk that night that he “was eventually asked to leave the bar.” White also vividly remembers the photo op in question:
Christopher White said he saw the NBA basketball team owner in the Barrel Room with his entourage and witnessed Cuban putting his arm around a woman for a photo.
“She jumped away like she was not happy with him,” White, 33, said in an interview Wednesday with The Oregonian/OregonLive. “That’s when the energy in the room kind of exploded.”
The original police report notes that the alleged victim presented photos that show her look of “surprise and strain,” while it appears that “Cuban [was] reaching down toward her buttocks.” White, who is the first independent eyewitness to speak on the matter, told the Oregonian, “[I]t sure looked like [his hand] was too low to be just on his back.”
Following the incident in 2011, one of the woman’s friends also told police that Cuban was obviously inebriated while slurring his words and being unable to stand. As part of his denial, Cuban provided investigators with a “rebuttal” from two doctors who claimed that it was physically impossible for him to commit the sexual assault because he has big hands, and he also initially told police that he recalled nothing “unusual” about the night.
(Via ESPN & The Oregonian)