US folk and rock music icon Bob Dylan faces a civil lawsuit by a woman — claiming he groomed her with alcohol, drugs and threats for sexual abuse when she was 12.
The plaintiff, identified only as "J.C." filed court papers filed at the Manhattan Supreme Court on Friday, the New York Post reported — a day before New York State's Child Victims Act legislation expired.
She claims the 81-year-old singer-songwriter used his stardom to gain her trust and control her “as part of his plan to sexually molest and abuse”.
“Bob Dylan, over a six-week period between April and May of 1965 befriended and established an emotional connection with the plaintiff,” the papers say.
They allege Dylan, whose real name is Robert Zimmerman, established a “connection” with the girl to “lower her inhibitions with the object of sexually abusing her, which he did, coupled with the provision of drugs, alcohol and threats of physical violence, leaving her emotionally scarred and psychologically damaged to this day.”
The plaintiff says Dylan abused her on multiple occasions, several of those at the famous Chelsea Hotel in lower Manhattan, where Dylan and many other famous musicians lived and where his chosen namesake, the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, was taken fatally ill with pneumonia in 1953.
J.C. claims she has suffered lasting psychological problems as a result, including depression, humiliation and anxiety, which “are of a permanent and lasting natures and have incapacitated plaintiff from attending her regular activities”.
“The complaint speaks for itself,” her lawyer Daniel Isaacs told the NY Post by phone on Monday, declining to elaborate further.
The Child Victims Act, which allows those claiming to be victims of historic child sex abuse to sue their alleged abuses in civil courts, was passed by the state legislature in 2019 and extended for a year in 2020 by former New York governor Andrew Cuomo — since disgraced by allegations of sexual harassment.
A similar law in California is being used by Judy Huth to sue veteran comedian and actor Bill Cosby, who she claims abused her at the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles in 1974 when she was 15.