MONSTER HEEL

Vince McMahon Reportedly Settles Rape Claim With Ex-Referee

Rita Chatterton, the WWE’s first female referee, first accused McMahon of sexual assault in 1992.

Sources told The Wall Street Journal on Thursday that Vince McMahon had agreed to a legal settlement with the WWE’s first female referee, Rita Chatterton, who first came forward in 1992 to accuse the franchise’s executive chairman of raping her in his limousine six years prior. Chatterton’s attorney had originally sought $11.75 million in damages, according to a letter sent to McMahon’s legal team in November, several weeks before New York opened a one-year window doing away with statute-of-limitation regulations for sex crimes. The final settlement was several millions of dollars less, a source told the Journal, which could not determine an exact figure. “Mr. McMahon denies and always has denied raping Ms. Chatterton. And he settled the case solely to avoid the cost of litigation,” a lawyer for McMahon told the newspaper. McMahon had retired from the WWE in July as a number of separate sexual misconduct claims were aired, but engineered a return to the chairmanship earlier this month.