Dylan experts, or Dylanologists, have taken to recorded history to refute accusations that the Pulitzer Prize winning artist had sexually abused a 12-year-old back in 1965.
Dylanologists have pointed out that “the timeline of crimes allegedly committed in New York over those six weeks is hard to reconcile with the historical record.”
Said records referred to are accounts of biographers that place Dylan “overseas for the entire month of May 1965” and of concerts and gigs that show that Dylan was in the West Coast on several dates in April.
Dylanologists even pointed to a video clip that Dylan left for the U.K. from Seattle for his Don’t Look Back tour on 25th of April that lasted until May 10 with a show in the Royal Albert Hall. And that afterwards, Dylan headed to Portugal with his future wife, Sara Lownds, only to return to London on the 24th of May, where he was hospitalized after coming down with an illness on the trip.
“If Dylan was in New York in mid-April, it was for no more than a day of two. Woodstock was where he spent most of his time when not touring. And if he was in NYC, he invariably stayed at his manager’s apartment in Gramercy, not the Chelsea,” said Clinton Heylin, author and a leading Dylan scholar. “It is almost impossible to find one week — let alone six — that spring when Dylan could have been staying at the Chelsea Hotel,” he added.
But the lawyers of J.C. issued a statement that said, “We stand by the pleading. The complaint speaks for itself and our allegations shall be proven in the appropriate venue: A court of law.”
Early this week, a woman, only identified as “J.C.” claimed that “Dylan abused her between April and May 1965 and that Dylan ‘exploited his status as a musician by grooming J.C. to gain her trust and to obtain control over her as part of his plan to sexually molest and abuse J.C.’” wrote Rolling Stone.
In the same article, it also said that the accuser claims that Dylan gave “alcohol and drugs, abused her multiple times, and that some of the alleged incidents occurred in Dylan’s apartment at the Hotel Chelsea in New York City.”
The lawsuit, filed at the Supreme Court of the State of New York, seeks “compensatory damages for an unspecified amount to be determined by a jury at trial” for the “sustained physical and psychological injuries” sustained by the accuser.”
According to Rolling Stone, a representative for Dylan said that “the 56-year-old claim is untrue and will be vigorously defended.”