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Former WME power agent Adam Venit sued by ex-wife for alleged domestic abuse

Talent agent Adam Venit
Talent agent Adam Venit arrives at the Sports Museum of Los Angeles in 2011.
(Amanda Edwards / Getty Images)
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Adam Venit, once one of Hollywood’s most powerful agents, is being sued by his ex-wife, for alleged sexual assault, domestic violence and stalking.

In a lawsuit filed Sunday in the U.S. Central District Courtin Los Angeles, Trina Venit alleges that “over the course of their 20-plus-year marriage, Adam has physically, sexually, mentally, emotionally and verbally abused and insistently stalked and monitored,” her.

The federal suit further contends that Venit, a former partner at WME, “strangled, punched, kicked, drugged and sexually assaulted her, leaving her bloodied, bruised and scarred on too many occasions to count.”

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Venit was not immediately available for comment.

Venit, whose roster of clients included Adam Sandler, stepped down from WME in 2018 after he and the agency settled a lawsuit with actor Terry Crews, who alleged that Venit groped him at a party in West Hollywood in 2016. WME launched an investigation and Venit was placed on a 30-day unpaid suspension and demoted from head of the the motion picture department. Venit later apologized to Crews for the incident.

According to Trina Venit’s suit, “Adam’s brazen public assault on an imposing male former professional athlete pales in comparison to the abuse Adam has and continues to inflict on his wife behind closed doors.”

“When he wasn’t using his fists, he screamed, belittled, insulted, threatened, and spat on her and regularly pushed her out of cars, abandoning her roadside or elsewhere,” the lawsuit says. The complaint further alleges that Venit had “Trina falsely arrested so that he could scour their home to find, remove and destroy evidence of his horrendous abuse from her phone and computer.”

In March 2021, Venit filed for divorce. Three months later, Trina obtained a temporary domestic violence restraining order against her estranged husband, submitting evidence of several instances of abuse and saying that the Los Angeles Police Department “confiscated at least eight firearms and voluminous ammunition belonging to Adam from the family’s former residence on April 17, 2021.”

In an effort to undermine his wife, the suit claims, two months later, in June 2021, Venit filed a domestic violence restraining order against Trina, from Hawaii, where he currently resides.

Saying that she is “in grave fear for her life,” Trina Venit contends that her former husband’s “drug, steroid and alcohol use spiraled out of control,” and his behavior since 2018 has “since become more erratic and disturbing.”

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Endeavor, the parent company for WME, was not immediately available for comment.

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