Ashley Massaro accused Vince McMahon of sexually preying talent in a previously unreleased statement.
VICE News‘ Tim Marchman is reporting that lawyers for Ashley Massaro have revealed a new statement that was written by Massaro before her death in 2019. Massaro alleged that McMahon sexually preyed on female talent, and she was punished for rejecting his advances.
The statement was unpublished because attorneys believed it was not relevant to the central claim in her case, which related to her concussions. This statement, published below, was given to lawyers as they worked on a sworn affidavit where she said she was raped on a Kuwait military base and that WWE covered it up.
Massaro claimed she witnessed McMahon “making out” with female talent in the locker room. She also alleged that McMahon punished her with demeaning scripts in an attempt to destroy her reputation because she rejected his advances herself.
Massaro’s statement
During my time with the WWE, I had observed Vince McMahon making-out with other divas in the locker room, but he never paid attention to me, and I assumed I was not his type. This changed after my Playboy cover was released. I was fortunate enough to be allowed to fly on the company jet and stay at the same hotels as the executives for a period of time so that I could get home faster to spend more time with my daughter. On one of these occasions, Vince was attempting to get me alone with him in his hotel room late at night and I felt extraordinarily uncomfortable. He began calling the hotel room phone and my cell phone nonstop. I called Kevin Dunn to explain the situation and he said I should tell Vince I was not feeling well and would see him on TV the next day, so I did. Immediately after that night, Vince started writing my promos for me. Vince does not write promos for female wrestlers—that is the job of the creative department—and he certainly wouldn’t have, under any normal circumstances, written a promo for me. But he did, and the promos were written with the clear intention of ruining my career. I brought the first script Vince wrote for me to the WWE employee in charge of Creative at the time, Michael Hayes, and he said, ‘you’re not saying this, who the [expletive] wrote this?’ and I told him that Vince did. He said, ‘Well kid, these are the breaks,’ meaning that Vince wanted to end my career and destroy my reputation on my way out. He is known for this type of behavior and also did this to [REDACTED] upon her departure from WWE. In addition, after that night, each time I walk by him he would make vulgar sexual comments that were clearly designed to make me uncomfortable.
Ashley Massaro, in her previously unreleased statement (via VICE)
WWE parent company, TKO, declined comment when asked by VICE about the allegations. The only thing the spokesperson confirmed was that Michael Hayes, who is mentioned in the statement, currently works for WWE and detailed his job duties.
Background
VICE received the statement from Konstantine Kyros and Erica Mirabella, two of the lawyers who represented Massaro and others in a class-action lawsuit related to traumatic brain injuries. That suit was dismissed in 2018. According to the lawyers, this newly-uncovered statement from Massaro was left out because it was not clearly relevant to the suit about concussions.
“Our colleagues ultimately decided we should focus only on the sexual assault and physical in-ring injuries Ashley sustained,” Mirabella said. “So I discussed this with Ashley and she agreed that we could remove it, so it was deleted. We then finalized the affidavit, she signed it, and we submitted it to the court.”
Ashley Massaro died in 2019 in an apparent suicide.
Read More: Attorney For John Laurinaitis: Most WWE Management Knew Of Ashley Massaro’s Rape Allegations
