On Wednesday, five men who had worked as “ring boys” for World Wrestling Entertainment as young teenagers in the 1980s filed a lawsuit alleging that they were groomed and sexually abused by ring crew boss and ring announcer Mel Phillips on the company’s watch. The suit, filed by five John Does, names WWE, parent company TKO Group Holdings, and WWE co-founders/former executives Vince and Linda McMahon as defendants. (Phillips died in 2012.) The suit paints a picture of Phillips as someone to whom WWE gave unfettered access to kids and the means to abuse them, such as private locker rooms. The plaintiffs’ allegations are buoyed by evidence already in the public record pointing to ongoing knowledge of the alleged abuse by those at the top of WWE, particularly the McMahons. While there are two previously known lawsuits by former ring boys alleging sexual assault against Phillips, this filing marks the first time that the McMahons have been named personally as defendants. It also directly ties Linda, the co-chair of Donald Trump’s 2024 transition team, to the alleged cover-up of child sexual abuse at a time when far-right influencers are trying to gin up fabricated pedophilia allegations against Trump rival and Democratic Party running mate Tim Walz.
“Thanks to the extraordinary courage of our clients, we now have the opportunity to hold accountable the WWE, and its leaders for the last 40-plus years, Vince and Linda McMahon, who enabled the rampant abuse of these young boys,” attorney Greg Gutzler told Rolling Stone in a statement. “The WWE organization and the McMahons had a higher duty to protect the Ring Boys, yet they failed in the most appalling way. The Complaint details just some of the facts underlying this scheme of abuse. We are certain there will be significant developments in the coming months that will illuminate, even further, the systemic corruption and abuse inside the WWE. We are committed to uncovering the truth behind this long-running, insidious abuse, and we honor our clients’ bravery by vowing to relentlessly pursue justice on their behalf.”
WWE, TKO, and Vince and Linda McMahon did not immediately respond to requests for comment, but this story will be updated if they do.
A March 2020 fact sheet from children’s rights think tank Child USA, backed by almost two dozen citations, notes that in the overwhelming majority of cases, child sexual abuse victims delay disclosing their abuse, often by decades. “Trauma that results from the abuse, power differentials between the child victim and adult perpetrator, and institutional power dynamics all impact the delay,” notes the report. Other factors contributing to victims’ reluctance to come forward, according to the report, include lacking the knowledge of anatomy or bodily autonomy to recognize sexual abuse, the vocabulary to describe it, and a trusted adult to disclose to, as well as the fear of not being believed if they do disclose.
“The foregoing admissions and accounts establish not only that Defendants knew or should have known about Phillips’s sexual harassment and abuse of the Ring Boys, but that Defendants failed to protect the Ring Boys and knowingly fostered and allowed a culture of sexual misconduct to permeate the WWE,” reads the complaint. The specific causes of action being cited in the complaint against all defendants are negligence as well as negligent hiring, training, and retention.
A history of legal issues
That Phillips allegedly preyed on children who worked for him had been publicly discussed since 1992, when the San Diego Union Tribune reported that Tom Cole and Chris Loss, who had worked as ring boys, accused Phillips of abusing them in service of his foot fetish. But outside of wrestling-centric fanzines, daytime TV, and tabloids — especially the New York Post — the story was largely ignored by major media outlets. At the time, Vince McMahon told the media that he had long suspected children were not safe around Philips. Those comments came in the larger context of a reckoning about the prevalence of anabolic steroid abuse by the WWE roster as well as allegations of sexual harassment against Phillips’ direct supervisor, Terry Garvin, and Garvin’s own childhood friend turned superior, Pat Patterson. It was routine for WWE announcers to joke on television about wrestlers having attended the “Terry Garvin School of Self-Defense.” Yet WWE’s habit of going scorched earth with legal threats and other interference, as documented by the likes of The Village Voice and pro wrestling newsletter Three Count, seemingly scared off national legacy media from covering the ring boy story.
I have reported extensively on the scandal, including in a 2020 feature for Business Insider which is cited throughout the new complaint. As I outline in that story, the Post’s Phil Mushnick wrote in a March 1992 column that Vince McMahon had told him that, in Mushnick’s words, “he had let Phillips go four years ago because Phillips’ relationship with kids seemed peculiar and unnatural,” but hired him back after telling him to stay away from children. After McMahon and WWE sued Mushnick and the Post a year later for defamation, the veteran sports columnist elaborated in a deposition that McMahon told him that “Vince and Linda returned Phillips to the organization with the caveat that Mel steer clear of underaged boys, stop hanging around kids, and stop chasing after kids.” That lawsuit was later dropped. The only ring boy known to initiate legal action in 1992 was Tom Cole, but he settled with WWE in exchange for a $55,000 settlement and a new job; a 1993 suit after Phillips was fired was dismissed for reasons that aren’t clear from the public record. Another ring boy sued in 1999; by all indications, that case was settled. In 2021, I reported on my Substack blog that, per FBI memos I received via a Freedom of Information Act request, the federal government had “identified 10 victims of Phillips.” Also according to those memos, the FBI didn’t pursue charges in part because none of the 10 boys they spoke to were “willing to admit to or describe the sexual nature of their activity with Phillips,” a statement contradicted by the allegations Cole and others made in 1992.
In responding to a request for comment to my 2020 Business Insider story, since-retired WWE attorney Jerry McDevitt characterized the idea that the McMahons were aware of Phillips’ proclivities as “outlandish” and “classic libel.” However, he ignored all direct questions about what McMahon had reportedly told Mushnick in 1992. And though McMahon and WWE sued Mushnick and the Post for defamation, they never actually argued that Mushnick had lied about McMahon’s March 1992 admissions. Both the new lawsuit and my 2020 article also cite multiple examples of former WWE personnel indicating that it was common knowledge that Phillips was sexually abusing ring boys. In addition, as I reported on my Substack blog in 2021 and as is also cited in the 2024 complaint, records obtained from FOIA requests and exhibits in the Mushnick lawsuit show that both WWE (in 1992) and the FBI (in 1993) came into possession of a videotape that showed Phillips doing exactly what multiple boys accused him of doing: forcefully rubbing a boy’s foot on his crotch.
Five new John Does speak out
In the new lawsuit, four of the five men describe abuse taking place in the first half of the 1980s, with John Doe 2 saying that his abuse extended into 1989, after Vince McMahon had fired and rehired Phillips. All five describe sexual abuse that began with Phillips targeting them as wrestling fans he met at or around shows he was working on, or in social situations near his home in Philadelphia.
In the complaint, John Doe 1, a 13-year-old in 1981-1982 who was attempting to avoid physical abuse at home, describes a grooming process that began with Phillips giving him access to an arena and locker room area, including a private room over which Phillips had control. The day they met, he alleges, Phillips groped his genitals but tried to play it off like a mistake. According to the complaint, a few weeks later, Phillips stripped down to his underwear in his hotel room and “wrestled” the boy, suffocating him while disregarding his protests, massaging the boy’s legs and licking his bare feet. This was the start of an escalating cycle of abuse, John Doe 1 alleges.
The next time John Doe 1 saw Phillips was at a WWE show in Springfield, Massachusetts, according to the complaint. There, he says, Phillips introduced him and two other boys to various wrestlers before bringing them to a private room with an attached bathroom. “Phillips then took the boys in the bathroom and began hugging them and touching their legs, genitals, and buttocks,” reads the complaint. “Phillips started grinding his genitals on the boys, and John Doe 1 could feel that Phillips was aroused.” Later, he alleges, Phillips drove John Doe 1 and a second boy from Springfield to Philadelphia for a show at the Spectrum, and rubbed Doe’s leg throughout the trip.
John Doe 1 provides a particularly lengthy and detailed narrative of abuse — “approximately seven or eight” incidents over a 12-to-18-month period, after each of which Phillips allegedly gave him money and told him not to tell his parents. The incidents included Phillips ejaculating on on John Doe 1’s stomach, “painfully manipulat[ing]” his feet and then “lick[ing] them for a long time,” “forc[ing] John Doe 1 to touch Phillips’s own genitals with his mouth and hands, and tr[ying] to penetrate John Doe 1.” After an incident where he alleges that Phillips tried to rape him and several other boys in a hotel room, Doe says he was so scared that he cut off contact.
John Doe 2, 13 at the time, met Phillips outside an arena in Massachusetts in 1984. In this case, Doe alleges that Phillips didn’t make much of an effort to groom him. “After talking about wrestling, Phillips said he wanted a favor and to follow him to the dressing room,” according to the complaint. “Once there, Phillips threw him to the ground, got on top of him, took off his shoes, and began pulling and twisting his feet and toes in a painful way. Phillips also put John Doe 2’s feet near Phillips’ crotch, and it felt like he was sexually aroused. Phillips also pressed his hands against the buttocks and groin area of John Doe 2.”
In the complaint, John Doe 2 alleges that Phillips continued with similar abuse in other hotel rooms and in private arena locker rooms, recording the abuse on his video camera. “Phillips would be able to grab and fondle his feet and body, including touching his buttocks, between the legs, and in the groin,” the complaint adds, embedding a photo of Phillips pinning him down with his knee bent back and his foot in Phillips’ face. “John Doe 2 witnessed Phillips similarly abuse other young boys,” the complaint adds after the photo. He also alleges that Phillips took photos and videos of the abuse.
John Doe 3 was living in a foster home in Pennsylvania when he met Phillips in the early 1980s. “When they met, Mel explained who he was, asked if he liked wrestling, helped him meet a couple wrestlers, and offered to take him to Philadelphia for a show,” reads the complaint. “Phillips would pick him up and drive him to Hamburg, Pennsylvania where the WWE did tapings.” (WWE’s final taping in Hamburg was on May 30, 1984, so this suggests the abuse took place before then.)
“Phillips wrestled him to the ground and started squeezing and twisting his feet to make him submit,” reads the complaint’s description of one hotel-room incident. “While wearing nothing but a small T-shirt and underwear, Phillips then got rougher by pinning him on his back… Phillips then rubbed his genitals on John Doe 3’s legs and feet until he orgasmed.” After they fell asleep in the same bed, Doe 3 alleges that Phillips grinded up against him until he orgasmed while repeating, “It’s OK, it’s OK.” The next morning, Phillips drove him home and paid him for his ring crew work. The plaintiff alleges that Phillips would sometimes give him “soda” that “tasted different than normal soda” and caused him to become lightheaded, all as a pretext to further sexual abuse. As with John Doe 2, he claims that Phillips shot photographs and videos of the abuse.
John Doe 4 met Phillips when he was approximately 13 years old, at some point between 1983 and 1985. Phillips frequently drove around the Philadelphia neighborhood where Doe and two of his friends lived, and struck up enough of a rapport that he was soon driving them around the city. A confidential witness cited in the complaint, described as a sibling of one of Doe’s friends, echoed their allegations in an interview with Rolling Stone. The witness recalls that, on multiple occasions, she witnessed how Phillips would “drive onto their street, watch the boys play, and show them all WWE championship belts that he kept in his car.” The witness adds that after Phillips would take the boys out, “they sometimes returned drunk.”
“As just a little [sibling] sitting there, you would hear them talk and hear how drunk they were,” the witness tells Rolling Stone. “We would just sit on the corner and talk, and I’m listening to them talk. I’m like, ‘What the fuck?’”
According to the complaint, after one show in Landover, Maryland, Phillips and the boys decamped to a motel, where he served them alcohol. When John Doe 4 got so drunk that he vomited, Phillips took him into the bathroom under the pretext of cleaning him up and got in the shower with him, forcibly touching his genitals and guiding Doe’s hand to his own penis to masturbate him to orgasm. During this encounter, Phillips also attempted to rape Doe.
John Doe 4 and his friends worked as part of Phillips’ ring crew on “approximately six or seven WWE shows at the [Philadelphia] Spectrum,” always able to get in the performers’ entrance by telling security that they were there to meet up with Phillips. On each occasion, “Phillips ‘wrestled’ John Doe 4 and the other underaged boys, pinning them on the ground, laying on top of their backsides with his groin in their buttocks, bending their limbs, and twisting and pulling their toes.” Phillips also continued with his alleged modus operandi of using the boys’ feet to touch his genitals. Doe notes in the complaint that Phillips “often” did these things in front of various wrestlers, as well as retired wrestler Pat Patterson, who served as one of Vince McMahon’s top lieutenants.
The complaint also describes an occasion where Phillips allegedly gave the boys beer and John Doe 4 passed out. “The next day, John Doe 4 noticed blood in his underwear and experienced fecal incontinence which had not happened to him before,” the complaint alleges. “Confidential Witness #1’s brother (one of the friends of John Doe 4) told their other sibling that Phillips put things in his rectum.”
John Doe 5 says in the complaint that he was approximately 15 years old when he met Phillips circa 1983-1984. As with John Doe 4, he was a Philadelphia local who got to know Phillips when the announcer would drive through his neighborhood showing off the WWE props he kept in his car, like championship belts. In the complaint, Doe alleges that the abuse started after a trip to Landover, Maryland, where “Phillips plied John Doe 5 and other boys with alcohol Phillips kept in his car.” At a local motel, Phillips “wrestled” the boys, which included, just as the other plaintiffs described, “laying on top of their backsides with his groin in their buttocks,” twisting their toes, and putting Doe’s foot on his (Phillips’) genitals while he was aroused. The complaint also embeds a photograph Doe took of two of his friends in one of the hotel rooms they shared with Phillips, where one of the boys appears to have stripped down to his underwear and what appears to be a beer can is visible in the background.
The WWE has spent the last few years mired in sexual misconduct scandals. Vince McMahon resigned as CEO in July 2022 after a series of Wall Street Journal reports revealed that the company’s board of directors was investigating $12 million that he had paid out in sexual misconduct settlements. The Journal also later reported that, in late 2022, seemingly motivated by a demand letter and New York’s Adult Victims Act lifting the statute of limitations, he paid a settlement “in the millions of dollars” to former WWE referee Rita Chatterton, who alleged that McMahon raped her in 1986. McMahon staged a hostile takeover in January 2023, using extra voting power granted to him as a McMahon family member to push himself back into the company. But that tense situation escalated in January 2024, when Janel Grant, a former WWE employee, sued Vince McMahon, WWE, and former executive John Laurinaitis, alleging rape and sex trafficking, leading to Vince’s second resignation from the company he founded (with no chance of a second hostile takeover due to the elimination of his special voting power). The Grant suit is currently paused as the Department of Justice investigates McMahon for potential related criminal charges.
As for the ring boys’ lawsuit, it remains to be seen how it will play out, beyond bringing new attention to a story that had long remained buried. “These grown adults? They knew,” the lawsuit’s confidential witness told Rolling Stone in an interview when asked if there was a single message she wanted to hammer home. Adults who gave Mel Phillips the opportunity to storm into their neighborhood as “[the] man who came with shiny belts.”
