Friend of Ashley Massaro corroborates rape allegation, WWE cover-up claim

During an appearance on NewsNation’s Banfield this week, Cara Pipia, best friend of the late Ashley Massaro, backed up Massaro’s claims of a WWE cover-up regarding her 2006 rape while on a military base in Kuwait.

As part of a lawsuit against WWE over its handling of concussions, Massaro gave a sworn affidavit in 2017 alleging that she was drugged and raped by someone posing as a military doctor in Kuwait during a WWE tour in 2006. Massaro stated that Vince McMahon apologized for what she went through, but he urged her not to disclose the incident because it would ruin WWE’s relationship with the military. Massaro said she was called into a meeting with WWE executives and told that it was in WWE’s best interest that the information of her attack was not made public.

Pipia stated on Banfield that, when Massaro returned home from Kuwait, Massaro “spent about eight hours” crying and telling her what happened.

Pipia said Massaro also told her about the meeting with WWE executives. Pipia claimed that Massaro was “threatened” and there was no compassion or sympathy from WWE:

She spoke with Vince McMahon many times. Vince had his daughter [Stephanie McMahon] take his place because she was a female, a woman and to make Ashley comfortable. And they just played with her.

They play with her because everything that Stephanie had made her feel comfortable and safe about, as soon as they walked into this boardroom meeting, Ashley was on her own completely.

And she was threatened and there was no compassion, there was no sympathy, there was nothing.

Massaro died of suicide in 2019. Ashleigh Banfield asked Pipia if she feels what happened to Massaro in Kuwait contributed to her suicide.

“99 percent,” Pipia responded. “Absolutely.”

After Massaro’s death, WWE claimed that McMahon and WWE management were never informed of Massaro’s rape allegation.

Despite that, a lawyer for former WWE executive John Laurinaitis recently told Vice News that upper WWE management was aware of the allegation. Laurinaitis claims that proper protocols were followed and there was no cover-up.

McMahon, Laurinaitis, and WWE are named as defendants in a lawsuit filed by former WWE employee Janel Grant last month. Grant alleges that she was the victim of physical and emotional abuse, sexual assault, and sex trafficking while at WWE. McMahon resigned from WWE and its parent company TKO Group Holdings following the lawsuit.

Last week, Vice News obtained and published a portion of Massaro’s 2017 affidavit where Massaro accused McMahon of preying on her and other women’s wrestlers. This portion of the affidavit was originally left out “because it wasn’t relevant to central claims in the lawsuit in which they were representing her, which concerned concussions.”