Another three women have accused actor Dustin Hoffman of sexual misconduct, including a 16-year-old high school friend of his daughter more than three decades ago, Hollywood trade magazine Variety reported Thursday.
Variety published the accounts from the three women, which the 80-year-old double Oscar winner’s lawyer told the publication were “defamatory falsehoods.” They bring the number of women to publicly accuse Hoffman of harassment in recent days to six.
Playwright Cori Thomas said she spent a Sunday afternoon with Hoffman and his daughter in 1980 when she was a 16-year-old student at the elite United Nations International School in New York, Variety reported.
But after dinner, she alleged that she was left alone in Hoffman’s hotel room, waiting for her mother to collect her, when the actor disappeared into the bathroom before coming back and “standing there naked.”
Hoffman then asked Thomas to massage his feet, Variety reported.
“I didn’t know that I could say no, so I did it,” she was quoted as saying. “And he kept telling me, ‘I’m naked. Do you want to see?'”
Thomas said she was “saved” by her mother arriving downstairs. “I was humiliated,” she told Variety. “I was so mortified, I never said anything.”
Two other women said Hoffman assaulted them on 1987 movie “Ishtar” by inserting his fingers inside them.
Melissa Kester said that afterward she “sat in the bathroom crying. I thought, ‘Oh my God.’ I felt like I’d been raped. There was no warning.”
The other woman remained anonymous. She told Variety that she was a 22-year-old extra when Hoffman offered to give her a ride home after a wrap party.
He “took his hand and stuck his fingers right up inside of me. I didn’t know what to do. He’s smiling at me. I was frozen,” she was quoted as saying.
A firestorm of harassment allegations, which began in October against disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, have ended the careers of a litany of powerful men in the worlds of Hollywood, business, politics, journalism and entertainment. Also on Thursday, Texas Congressman Blake Farenthold, who is facing allegations of sexual harassment, announced in a video posted to Facebook that he will not run for re-election in 2018.
“I allowed a workplace culture to take root in my office that was too permissive and decidedly unprofessional,” he said, adding that he was “profoundly sorry.”
