In an interview with POST Wrestling and Wrestlenomics, Janel Grant offered an assessment of her current feelings toward Vince McMahon, the former WWE chairman she has accused of sexual abuse and related misconduct.
When asked what she feels toward McMahon today, Grant did not cite anger, hatred, or fear. “Forgiveness,” she answered. She elaborated that the emotion “does not take up space in my brain.” Instead, she described feeling empathy, noting that the chain of events that brought their relationship into public view had affected him as well.
“I feel even empathy, because in a weird way, and this is extreme polar opposites, the thing that might… the series of events that caused The Journal story to happen—whatever it was—it equally impacted him,” Grant said. “There are so many people involved in [the] decision-making that I can’t sit still and process.”
What occupies her thoughts now, she explained, is the broader sequence that began with anonymous emails to WWE’s board of directors in the spring of 2022 and the subsequent Wall Street Journal reporting that made their relationship public. “That is what occupies my brain,” she said.
Grant’s comments come more than four years after she first became known as the former WWE employee at the center of a major corporate scandal. In her 2024 lawsuit, she alleged that McMahon sexually abused and coerced her during her time at the company from 2019 to 2022. McMahon has repeatedly denied the claims, calling them “fictitious,” “salacious, false, and defamatory,” and describing their relationship as consensual. The federal case was moved into private arbitration earlier this year.
In the same interview, Grant reflected on the day the first Wall Street Journal story broke in June 2022. She described collapsing when she learned a report was imminent and asking her attorney whether McMahon was okay, explaining that she felt he was the only person who could tell her what was happening. She also recounted coming close to ending her own life that evening before a support person intervened.
Grant, who has spent recent months advocating for legislation in Connecticut that would limit the use of nondisclosure agreements in cases of workplace misconduct, framed her current mindset as part of a larger personal evolution. She recently received an Advocacy in Action Award from the Connecticut Alliance to End Sexual Violence and described the moment as a “pencils-down” close to a turbulent chapter.
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