Woman Sues Bob Dylan For Allegedly Sexually Abusing Her As A Child In 1965

A woman is accusing legendary musician Bob Dylan of sexually abusing her in 1965 when she was still a child, according to a new lawsuit.

Bob Dylan, the 80-year-old singer and songwriter of hits such as "Like A Rolling Stone" and "Mr. Tambourine Man," is accused of plying the accuser with drugs and alcohol back in 1965, according to Page Six. The victim, known only as ‘J.C.’ in court records, claims Dylan sexually abused her when she was 12 years old.

The 68-year-old plaintiff filed a lawsuit on Friday with the Manhattan Supreme Court.

“Bob Dylan, over a six-week period between April and May of 1965 befriended and established an emotional connection with the plaintiff,” according to court records cited by Page Six.

Representatives of the plaintiff claim that Dylan groomed the girl to “lower [J.C.’s] 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 accuser claims the sexual abuse occurred over a series of visits to Dylan’s apartment at The Chelsea Hotel.

A spokesperson for Dylan says the allegations are false.

“The 56-year-old claim is untrue and will be vigorously defended,” the spokesperson told Page Six, who broke the story.

During the end of April and into May of 1965, around the time when the alleged abuse took place, Dylan was on a U.K. Tour, according to NBC. Parts of the tour were captured in ‘Don’t Look Back,’ a 1967 documentary by filmmaker D.A. Pennebaker.

According to Clinton Heylin’s 1996 biography, ‘Bob Dylan: A Life Stolen By Moments Day By Day 1941-1995,” Dylan was chronicled in the U.K. before traveling to France and Portugal into June of 1965, according to the BBC.

Daniel Isaacs, J.C.’s legal representative, says that the “complaint speaks for itself,” according to Page Six.

“She provided a lot of detailed information regarding the time in question that leaves no doubt that she was with him in the apartment during the time in question,’ said Isaacs.

It was at this apartment at The Chelsea Hotel that Dylan’s seventh studio album, ‘Blonde On Blonde,’ was born, according to The Daily Beast.

J.C. claimed that the abuse against her caused depression, humiliation, and anxiety that “are of a permanent and lasting natures [sic] and have incapacitated plaintiff from attending her regular activities,” according to the court papers cited by Page Six.

She also claimed that she had to seek medical treatment for the long-lasting effects of the abuse.

Dylan’s accuser is suing him for an unspecified amount of money in damages and seeking a trial by jury.

The lawsuit came on the eve of the expiration window of New York’s Child Victims’ Act. The law allowed child victims one year to file civil lawsuits and criminal charges against their abusers, no matter how long ago the sexual abuse occurred, thus extending the statute of limitations.

The defendant, named in the lawsuit by his birth name, Robert Allen Zimmerman, is a Grammy and Oscar award-winning songwriter whose pieces often stood as anthems for the civil rights and anti-war movements of the 1960s.

He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by former U.S. President Barack Obama in 2012 and won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2016, an award accepted by the legendary musician and poet Patti Smith.

Dylan’s accuser has no intentions of publicly identifying herself, her lawyer told Page Six.