It’s been over a month since the first sexual harassment allegations against Dustin Hoffman came out, with writer Anna Graham Hunter saying he groped and propositioned her when she was 17, and things have gotten steadily worse since then. Genius producer Wendy Riss Gatsiounis also said that Hoffman harassed her when she was younger, actress Kathryn Rossetter said that Hoffman groped her on multiple occasions when they were working on Death Of A Salesman in 1985, and now three new allegations have come out, with two women saying he sexually assaulted them and a third saying he exposed himself to her when she was in high school.
That comes from Variety, which shares the stories of the three women and says that they all “fit into a pattern of alleged behavior” that has emerged regarding Hoffman. Cori Thomas says she was a classmate of Hoffman’s daughter when she was 16, and the three of them once spent a day together in New York and then stopped at a hotel Hoffman was staying at. Hoffman’s daughter left at some point, and while Thomas was waiting for her parents, she says Hoffman took a shower and then came out and stood naked in front of her. Thomas says he asked her to massage his feet, and she managed to get out of the room when her mother came to pick her up.
Then there’s Melissa Kester, who was dating a man working on the music for Ishtar when she met Hoffman. During one recording session for a vocal track, Hoffman asked to have Kester sent into the recording booth while the engineers made adjustments. She says he grabbed her and hugged her, acting as if she was helping him sing better, at which point she says he put his fingers in her pants. “He put his fingers inside me,” she says, adding that he kept them there for 15-20 seconds while she was frozen in shock. She then ran out, saying she felt like she had been raped.
The third woman chose to remain anonymous, but she says she was also working on Ishtar and had a non-speaking role in a nightclub scene. She says Hoffman approached her on set and struck up a relationship, eventually inviting her to the wrap party. That night, he offered to give her a ride home in a crowded station wagon. The two of them laid in the far back, and as the car was moving, he allegedly stuck his fingers up her skirt. “I was frozen,” she says. She doesn’t know how long his fingers were inside her, but eventually he handed her $20 and told her to come to where he was staying. She agreed, choosing not to tell anyone because she thought they’d think she’s “a whore” and because “he’s Dustin Hoffman,” but she told Variety that what happened in the car was non-consensual.