A lawsuit filed in the US has accused singer-songwriter, Bob Dylan of grooming and sexually abusing a 12-year-old girl in 1965.
The lawsuit, filed in New York City on Friday, alleges that Dylan gave the girl drugs and alcohol, and sexually abused her “multiple times“.
The plaintiff, who now lives in Connecticut, is identified in the documents only as “J.C.”
J.C. has made claims of assault, battery, false imprisonment, and infliction of emotional distress against Dylan.
“Bob Dylan, over a six-week period between April and May of 1965, befriended and established an emotional connection with the plaintiff,” the lawsuit claims.
It alleges that he: “exploited his status as a musician by grooming J.C. to gain her trust and to obtain control over her as part of his plan to sexually molest and abuse J.C.”
J.C. states that the emotional damage of these events persist, claiming in the suit that her depression, humiliation and anxiety: “are of a permanent and lasting natures and have incapacitated [her] from attending her regular activities“.
A spokesperson for Dylan said the claim is “untrue” and affirmed that it “will be vigorously defended.”
Dylan, now 80 years old, would have been 23-24 at the time of the alleged incidents.
The suit was filed just before the closing of the Child Victims’ Act “look-back window” on Saturday.
The window, effective from August 2019, allowed survivors of child sexual abuse to bypass the statute of limitations and file claims regardless of when the alleged incident occurred.
It was planned to last one year from August 2019. However, it was extended due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“So many adults had been abused as children and had no recourse because of the punitively short statute of limitations,” State Sen. Brad Hoylman said to the New York Post of the window.
Over 9,000 suits were filed in the window.
The window was recently used by Virginia Giuffre to file a claim against Prince Andrew.
From Saturday, as the window has come to a close, victims of child sex abuse have until the age of 55 to file their claims in NY. Before the Child Victims Act of 2019, that age was 23.
anyways, reminder that the child victims act and adult survivors act were only passed in NY in 2019 and 2021, respectively. It took YEARS of us lobbying and pushing to get it passed.
— Shannon 🌿✨ (@darlingstardust) July 29, 2021
There are millions of other people like Dylan that escaped investigations due to the statute. NY is progressive about it now, but the rest of the country still isn’t. Nowhere near.
— Shannon 🌿✨ (@darlingstardust) July 29, 2021
