Bob Dylan in a performance in 2012.FRED TANNEAU / AFP
Singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, a 2016 Nobel Prize winner for literature, is facing a lawsuit filed by a woman who claims he abused her in 1965 when she was a 12-year-old girl after giving her drugs and alcohol.
A spokesman for the famous folk artist, now 80 years old, rejects the accusations.
"The claim from 56 years ago is false and we will defend it vigorously," he says.
The plaintiff, identified as JC, maintains that Dylan sexually abused her on numerous occasions during six weeks, between April and May 1965, some in the musician's apartment in New York, “leaving her an emotional scar and with psychological damage to this day. from today".
The letter indicates that "he took advantage of his status as a musician to provide JC with alcohol and drugs and sexually abuse several times."
There were also “threats of physical violence”.
By supplying these substances, the artist made the victim less self-conscious.
"He became friends and established an emotional connection with the complainant," adds the legal document.
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The complainant alleges that the singer-songwriter's actions have led her to suffer from permanent depression and anxiety that have prevented her from carrying out normal activities.
Specifically, it accuses him of assault, battery, illegal detention and emotional damage.
Something that Dylan's legal representative has denied on the Page Six website.
"These 56-year-old allegations are not true and will be vigorously defended," said the artist's attorney, Daniel Isaacs.
"The complaint speaks for itself," he pointed out.
The lawsuit was filed this Friday, a day before the period that had been opened in New York to present cases of child sexual abuse that had been prescribed under a law passed in the state in February 2019 came to an end.
Dylan emerged from the Greenwich Village folk scene in the early 1960s to become one of the most acclaimed and influential artists of the rock age with hits like
Blowin in the Wind
and
Like a Rolling Stone
. He has sold more than 125 million records worldwide and won the Nobel Prize for literature in 2016.