Dustin Hoffman Denies New Sexual Misconduct Allegations

Three more women have accused Dustin Hoffman of sexual misconduct, adding to the handful of otherallegations against the Oscar-winning actor. On Thursday, Variety published a startling report in which one woman alleges that Hoffman exposed himself to her when she was a minor, while two other woman who worked on the film Ishtar claim he sexually assaulted them on separate occasions.

Hoffman’s attorney Mark A. Neubauer of Carlton Fields Jorden Burt called the accusations against the actor “defamatory falsehoods” in a letter to Variety’s owner, Penske Media Corp. He did not provide additional comment to the publication.

In the report, the first detailed allegation is from Cori Thomas, a playwright. She tells Variety that she met Hoffman in 1980, and was friends with his daughter, Karina. She was 16 at the time. The three of them spent the day together, going to a bookstore and getting dinner. As the day began to wind down, they went back to Hoffman’s hotel. Karina was later sent home. Thomas stayed with Hoffman as she waited for her mother to pick her up. The actor, Thomas claims, later went into the bathroom, then returned wearing just “a towel at first wrapped around him, which he dropped.”

“He was standing there naked,” she said. “I think I almost collapsed, actually. It was the first time I had ever seen a naked man. I was mortified. I didn’t know what to do. And he milked it. He milked the fact that he was naked. He stood there. He took his time.”

When her mom came to pick her up, Thomas did not tell her what Hoffman allegedly did. “My mother always had some instinct that something untoward had happened,“ she said. “She kept asking me, and I was so mortified, I never said anything.”

Thomas says she recently told her mother the story; she never told Karina, though she was a bridesmaid in Thomas’s wedding, because she did not want to “embarrass her.”

The second allegation comes from Melissa Kester, a woman who was dating a man working on the 1987 film Ishtar. She visited him at work and met Hoffman twice. On the third visit, she went to the control room where Hoffman, her boyfriend, and an engineer were working on a vocal track for the film. Kester recalls Hoffman having difficulties with the recording, and asking for her to join him in the recording booth in a joking manner. She went in. Hoffman was “flirtatious” but not in an “obscene” way. “It’s a little weird. He’s hugging me while he’s singing. But ha ha ha, it’s all a joke. My boyfriend is right there.”

But then, Hoffman allegedly assaulted her. “He literally just stuck his fingers down my pants,” Kester said. “He put his fingers inside me. And the thing I feel most bad about is I didn’t know what to do. I just stood there. I just froze in the situation like, ‘Oh my God, what is happening?’ It’s shocking when that happens to you.”

“He kind of laughed,” she continued. “Then I just ran out of there, and I sat in the bathroom crying. I thought, ‘Oh my God.’ I felt like I’d been raped. There was no warning. I didn’t know he would do that.”

Hoffman called her numerous times after that, she alleges: “The third time he called, that’s when I felt a rush of fear. That’s when I said, ‘You have to stop calling me. Please don’t call me.’” She later saw the actor at the premiere of Ishtar, she claims, but did not speak to him.

The third woman making allegations, who remains anonymous, had a non-speaking role in Ishtar. She was 22 years old. She said Hoffman offered her a ride after a wrap party in his station wagon. The car began filling up, so the woman offered to find a different ride home. Hoffman suggested they sit in the end of the wagon, so they did, laying down in the back. This is when he allegedly assaulted her, she claims.

“There are people inches from us,” she said. “And he just 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. I was outside of my body.”

She later says she was in “a kind of fugue state,” because the alleged assault triggered memories of abuse she suffered as a child. When they arrived at her location, she said Hoffman gave her $20 and told her to go to the San Remo Hotel. When she got there, Hoffman was waiting for her. They went up to his room, where he performed oral sex on her, and then they had sex. When Variety asked if this was consensual, she responded, “I don’t know.”

Get Vanity Fair’s HWD NewsletterSign up for essential industry and award news from Hollywood.Full ScreenPhotos:All the Looks from Zendaya’s Greatest Showman Press TourYohana DestaYohana Desta is a Hollywood writer for VanityFair.com.

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