The first female WWE referee to claim she was raped by former chairman Vince McMahon in the 1980s has revealed new details about the incident amid a spate of new allegations against the wrestling boss.
Rita Chatterton, who became a licensed fight referee in New York in 1984, had previously accused McMahon of forcing her into a limousine in a 1992 interview with Geraldo Rivera.
His accusations were corroborated by former professional wrestler Leonard Inzitari in a new report from new york magazine – which also delved into what led up to the harrowing encounter nearly four decades ago.
“He promised me half a million dollars a year,” he told the outlet in Monday’s story, referring to the contract offer McMahon extended over the phone after his television debut with the then-WWF in January 1985.
McMahon, whose father founded the WWF, had called Chatterton to say he was “impressed” with her work and wanted her to work “full time” but had a warning for her, he told New York Magazine.
“Stay clean,” he said, according to Chatterton.
“I don’t want to see you playing with any of the fighters. You keep it professional.”
The wrestling mogul also told Chatterton that she would be on the cover of magazines like Women’s Day, Better Homes and Gardens, and Time, so she quit her delivery job at Frito-Lay and began wrestling. full time. But the relationship soured when the young referee tried to follow up, and McMahon allegedly raped her in July 1986.
During her interview with New York Magazine, Chatterton declined to go into details, but Inzitari, a longtime friend from the business, corroborated her story for the first time since the allegations were made.
“I remember it like it was yesterday,” Inzitari told the outlet.
“She was a mess. She was shaking. She was crying.”
Inzitari, whose stage name was Mario Mancini, said shortly after the incident that he found Chatterton alone near the wrestling ring and when she saw him, she burst into tears and told him that she was in McMahon’s limousine when he “took his penis.” “. outside.”
“He made me put my head down there, and I let him know I wasn’t interested in doing that,” Inzitari recalled Chatterton telling him.
“After, [McMahon] he threw me on top of him”, she told Inzitari and soon, “he was inside her”.
Chatterton told the outlet that the attack happened after she asked McMahon to talk about her career and he told her to meet her at a restaurant after the show.
Later, while sitting at a “big round table” with a dozen other people, Chatterton brought up her career, but McMahon told her to shut up, she told the outlet.
“[He] he put his finger to his mouth shhh sign,” he recalled.
“When I walk out of the ladies’ room, McMahon is standing there… and he’s like, ‘I don’t want to talk to you about your career in front of all these people, because it’s none of his business.'”
He suggested that the two of them go to another restaurant down the street, but when she left the restaurant, McMahon said that he was tired and asked to talk inside his limousine.
“It will only take 10 minutes,” he allegedly said.
During her interview with Rivera, Chatterton claimed that McMahon then unbuttoned his pants and orally raped her.
“Vince went on, you know, ‘if you want a half-million dollar contract, you’re going to have to satisfy me, and that’s the way things have to go,'” he said at the time.
“Vince grabbed my hand, kept trying to get my hand on him. He was scared. In the end, my wrist was all purple, black, and blue. Things just didn’t… He just… God, he just didn’t stop. This man just didn’t stop.”
Chatterton told Rivera that McMahon asked him how his daughter planned to go to college, and he said, “Of course, she doesn’t have to go to college.”
“I was forced to have oral sex with Vince McMahon. When I couldn’t fulfill his wishes, he got really mad, started ripping off my jeans, threw me on top of him, and told me again that if I wanted a half-million-dollar-a-year contract, I had to satisfy him. He could make me or break me, and if he didn’t satisfy him, he was on the black ball, that was it, I was done,” he told Rivera.
Speaking to New York Magazine, Chatterton recalled what McMahon said after the attack was over.
“One of the things that sticks with me, and always will…was, after he was done doing his job, he looked at me and said, ‘Remember when I told you not to mess with any of the fighters? Well, you just did,’” he recalled.
After the attack, Chatterton told New York magazine that he went into the restaurant’s bathroom and “cried his eyes out” before going home and taking a “five-hour shower.”
While he contacted an attorney hoping to hold McMahon accountable, he ultimately decided against it.
“It turned out that it was my word against McMahon’s, because I took a shower and didn’t go to the hospital,” he said.
“I was afraid… It was powerful. It was going to be him on me.”
When Chatterton first told Rivera his story in 1992, WWE was already in the midst of numerous scandals and his claims were buried in noise. She soon, she quit wrestling altogether and became a youth counselor.
Earlier this month, McMahon was accused of paying millions of dollars in hush money to an employee with whom he had an affair, prompting him to resign from his position as CEO and Chairman of WWE.
The new claims are what inspired Chatterton and Inzitari to speak out after so much time had passed.
“I’m sure others will come forward. Because we are not the only two. I have no doubt about it,” Chatterton told the outlet.
“When it comes to wrestling, I think I’m the first in a lot of things… As far as I know, I’m the first to come out with the whole issue of how trashy it is.”
Inzitari, who has avoided speaking negatively about McMahon in the past, agreed.
“I’ll tell you why I’m jumping on the bandwagon now,” he said.
“There are worse things than that.”
WWE did not respond to a request for comment.
Reference-nypost.com