A woman who sued Bob Dylan for allegedly sexually assaulting her when she was 12 has dropped her case just after the folk rock artist’s legal team charged her with destroying evidence.
In August last year, the plaintiff, who remains unnamed and identified only as JC, filed suit alleging that Dylan abused her for six weeks between April and May 1965.
It alleged that Dylan “exploited his status as a musician” to “provide alcohol and drugs and sexually abuse her multiple times” at the famed Chelsea hotel in Manhattan.
The lawsuit also accused Dylan, who turned 81 in May, of physically threatening the girl.
At the time, a spokesperson for Dylan, born Robert Zimmerman, had called the allegation “false.”
In a letter that Dylan’s legal team filed in federal court on Wednesday, they accused the plaintiff of deleting important text messages and suggested that “monetary sanctions” were necessary.
On Thursday, Dylan’s lawyers said the plaintiff had dropped the case. Lawyers for the plaintiff did not immediately respond to a request from AFP for comment.
“This case is over,” Dylan’s lead attorney, Orin Snyder, said in a statement to AFP. “It is outrageous that it was ever brought in the first place. We are pleased that the plaintiff dropped this lawyer-driven sham and the case was dismissed with prejudice.”
The plaintiff’s lawsuit was filed last summer, a day before the window for filing claims under New York State’s Child Victims Act closed.
The law allowed abuse victims to sue their alleged attackers regardless of the age of the claims or the statute of limitations.