The complainant claims that the American singer assaulted her over a six-week period when she was 12, using drugs and alcohol. The artist's spokesperson declares that this accusation is "false" and will be "strongly opposed".
Bob Dylan is being sued in New York court by a woman who claims the singer sexually assaulted her over fifty-five years ago, when she was 12. According to the complaint filed Friday, August 13, the American artist allegedly abused the complainant, whose initials JC only are mentioned, over a period of six weeks between April and May 1965.
Bob Dylan "used his status as a musician to provide alcohol and drugs to JC and to sexually assault him on several occasions" , supports the complaint, which also accuses the singer of having physically threatened the girl. She claims that Dylan caused her "severe psychological damage and emotional trauma . " The amount of damages claimed is not specified.
In his apartment at the Chelsea Hotel, New York
Some of the alleged assaults are said to have taken place in the apartment Bob Dylan owns in New York City at the famous Chelsea Hotel. In a statement to the USA Today daily , its spokesperson said that "the fifty-six-year-old accusation [was] false and [would] be strongly opposed . "
The complaint was filed a day before the deadline under a New York law that grants the right to bring charges of child sexual assault in civil justice even after the statute of limitations. This possibility, which was only open for one year (extended because of the Covid-19 pandemic), ended on August 14. Last week, a plaintiff in the case involving financier Jeffrey Epstein used the law to file a lawsuit against Prince Andrew, Queen Elizabeth II's second son, for alleged sexual assault .
Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016 for "having created new poetic expressions in the great American tradition of song" , Bob Dylan is considered one of the greatest singer-songwriters of all time. Among his most famous songs are Blowin 'in the Wind , The Times They Are a-Changin' , or Like A Rolling Stone . The 80-year-old artist came to New York folklore in the early 1960s and has sold over 125 million albums worldwide.