John Travolta fights back as two masseurs allege sexual harassment
BY BILL ZWECKER
bzwecker@suntimes.com May 8, 2012 9:36PM
John Travolta’s legal battle with a masseur who claims the actor made unwanted sexual advances during a massage in January got twice as ugly Tuesday as another masseur filed a second lawsuit Tuesday making similar claims.
Both plaintiffs are represented by the same Los Angeles attorney, and both filed anonymously as “John Doe” (No. 1 and No. 2). Travolta’s team has charged the lawyer is merely seeking his “15 minutes of fame” and promises to sue both the lawyer and his clients after moving to have the suits thrown out of court.
The second man claimed in his suit — asking $2 million in damages — that he had “substantial documentation and numerous witnesses regarding the substance of Travolta’s actions.”
This second incident supposedly took place in an Atlanta resort in late January. The first man’s claim was immediately challenged by Travolta’s representatives, who say they can prove the actor was on the East Coast that day — across the country from the Beverly Hills Hotel, where the incident allegedly occurred.
Along with vehemently denying these lawsuits’ validity, Travolta is “sick and tired of fighting this insidious, ongoing whisper campaign that has gone on for years,” a longtime close friend of the actor told me Tuesday.
Stories have long circulated, raising questions about Travolta’s sexual preferences — despite his 20-year marriage to
Kelly Preston and the birth of three children, including son Jett, who died in 2009. The youngest, son Ben, was born in 2010.Back in 1990, the National Enquirer paid Paul Barresi a reported $100,000 for a story in which Barresi claimed he’d had a two-year affair with Travolta in the early 1980s. Several months after the story was published, Barresi bowed to pressure from Travolta’s legal team — retracting his story and stating in a letter that he had never engaged in homosexual behavior with Travolta.
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