John Travolta: ‘Sexual battery’ case involving 21-year-old masseur surfaces

Police in 2000 took a police report from a 21-year-old masseur who accused John Travolta of groping his buttocks and indecently exposing himself during a deep-body massage at a Palm Springs hotel, the Daily Mail reported Monday.

Travolta, 63, also made lewd remarks about gay fantasies while at the spa facility at the LaQuinta Hotel around 1:30 a.m. on February 15, 2000, according to documents published by RadarOnline.com.

The hotel employee was traumatized enough by the incident that he reported it to the Palm Springs Sheriff’s Department. An officer was sent to the scene, and learned that an employee wanted to file a complaint against the “Pulp Fiction” star for sexual battery.

The newly uncovered police report marks the latest in a series of incidents pointing to Travolta’s alleged sexual preference for men, as well as an alleged habit of hitting on men at high-end spas, hotels and cruise ships and in the locker rooms of fitness clubs, according to the Daily Beast. Travolta has denied similar claims in the past.

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Since 1975, Travolta has been a devout practitioner of Scientology, a movement based on founder L. Ron Hubbard’s book “Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health.” That tome, the basis for Scientology practices, classified the homosexual as “the sexual pervert.”

The gay rumors about Travolta first became public in May 1990 after the National Enquirer ran a cover story describing an alleged two-year affair between Travolta and Paul Barresi, a gay-porn producer, the Daily Beast reported.

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According to Barresi, the two met in 1982, after the actor allegedly followed him into the shower room of a Los Angeles health club. Barresi later retracted the story, claiming he did so under legal pressure from Travolta’s attorneys.

Travolta married actress Kelly Preston in 1991. Despite Travolta’s newlywed status — and the birth of Jett in 1992, the first of their three children — the spa allegations persisted in the tabloids, the Daily Beast said. Yahoo! News reported that Travolta was banned from a Los Angeles country club and a major hotel chain in the early 1990s over his alleged penchant for hitting on men in shower rooms, the Daily Beast said.

This latest report about Travolta from 2000 could bring questions about his behavior back into the headlines, given the national conversation over sexual harassment and assault that is taking place place in the wake of misconduct allegations being made against other powerful men in Hollywood, as well as in politics and in Silicon Valley.

In the 2000 case from Palm Springs, Travolta was then 46. According to the police report obtained by RadarOnline.com the masseur said that Travolta kept removing his towel during the massage, exposing his bare buttocks.

After the massage, the two went into another room, where the employee performed what he called a “Citrus Scrub” on Travolta. The actor told the masseur that he was very attractive and that he had gotten him “excited,” the police report said.

After the scrub, Travolta convinced the masseur to join him in the steam room, saying he didn’t want to be alone. There Travolta removed his towel to be “nude” and offered to demonstrate his own massage techniques, the report said. That’s when Travolta allegedly groped the employee, the report said.

The man later told the sheriff’s officer he felt “violated” by the entire encounter, in which Travolta also made references to sex acts he liked to perform. The masseur told the officer he made “no advances toward Travolta and didn’t say anything to lead him on.”

But by the time the officer got to the hotel, the “Grease” actor had already checked out of the hotel, so he was unable to speak to him.

The masseur pushed for his case to be prosecuted but the officer determined that the “details do not meet the elements of battery … or sexual battery.” The officer added that the masseur was not “restrained unlawfully” and “consented to the touching after Travolta told him he was attractive.” There also were no witnesses to corroborate the employee’s complaint, so he closed the case as “unfounded” and advised the man to “speak with a civil attorney.”

RadarOnline.com said the incident was echoed in the private diaries of Travolta’s former manager Jonathan Krane, who died in August 2016.

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In the diaries, allegedly viewed by RadarOnline.com, Krane recalled how he told John to “immediately leave the hotel” and “persuaded the hotel it was in their best interest to get their employee to drop the criminal charges, and any civil claims, and to persuade the police not to investigate because it was just a misunderstanding.”

But this incident isn’t the first time that Travolta has been accused of misconduct while getting a massage, according to various outlets.

In 2012, he was sued over two accusations that he tried to have sex with male masseurs at the Beverly Hills Hotel and at a resort in Atlanta, Georgia, Fox News reported. Those lawsuits, each seeking $2 million in damages, were later withdrawn.

Regarding the Beverly Hills Hotel incident, an unnamed therapist said Travolta tried to touch his genitals during a $200-per-hour massage appointment. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, also claimed that Travolta masturbated during the encounter, the Daily Mail said.

At the time, a spokesman for Travolta issued a vehement denial over the first lawsuit, saying “This lawsuit is complete fiction and fabrication. None of the events claimed in the suit ever occurred.”

But that same year, Fabian Zanzi, a former employee of Royal Caribbean Cruises, also accused the “Saturday Night Fever” star of coming onto him aboard a ship in 2009, the Daily News said. Lawyers for Zanzi and Travolta subsequently signed documents dismissing the action, which prevented Zanzi from refiling.

But just two years later, in 2014, Travolta fended off yet another lawsuit pointing to an alleged sexual preference for men, the Daily News reported. This suit was brought by a former pilot for his aircraft company, who worked for him in the 1980s. The pilot alleged he and Travolta were lovers and sued for the right to publish a tell-all book about their romance.

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In a 2014 interview with the Daily Beast, Travolta addressed the newest lawsuit as well as the persistent rumors about his sexuality.

“This is every celebrity’s Achilles heel,” the actor, then 60, told the Daily Beast.

“It’s just about people wanting money,” Travolta said. “That’s all. It happens on many levels.”