Five more women have come forward to accuse Dustin Hoffman of sexual misconduct, one of whom was a minor at the time of the alleged incident.
Cori Thomas told Variety she was 16 years old and a classmate of Hoffman’s daughter, Karina, in New York at the time of the incident. After the three took a walk in Manhattan, Thomas’ parents were supposed to pick her up at a restaurant but instead, Hoffman suggested they all wait at the hotel he was staying at while leaving a note for Thomas’ parents at the restaurant.
When they arrived at the hotel, “Either Karina or Dustin suggested that [Karina] should go home” because it was a school night. “So she left, and I was left in the hotel room with him alone,” Thomas said.
There, she said Hoffman went to the bathroom to take a shower but came out with just a towel wrapped around him, which he later dropped.
“He was standing there naked. I think I almost collapsed, actually. It was the first time I had ever seen a naked man. I was mortified,” Thomas told Variety. He eventually put on a robe and asked her to massage his feet, she said, to which she complied.
“I didn’t know what to do in the circumstance,” she said. “I didn’t know that I could say no, so I did it. And he kept telling me, ‘I’m naked. Do you want to see?’”
Thomas’ parents rang the hotel room to pick her up, and she left. She didn’t tell the story to her mother until decades later. Speaking to Variety, Thomas’ mother recalled arriving at the restaurant, seeing the note and picking her daughter up at the hotel — and being concerned that she’d been there alone with Hoffman. Thomas also never told Hoffman’s daughter. She later told a family member, who corroborated hearing such a story in the 1980s.
Another woman, named Melissa Kester, accused Hoffman of sticking “his fingers down my pants” and putting “his fingers inside of me” during the production of 1987’s “Ishtar.” Kester was dating a man who worked on the music for the film and would accompany him to the recording studio where Hoffman would record the vocal tracks.
Hoffman allegedly asked her to come into the control room the third time she was there, which was when the incident occurred. People could see into the control room but Hoffman was only visible from the chest up.
She said he kept his fingers inside her for 15 to 20 seconds until he finished his take, at which point she moved away from him.
“He kind of laughed,” she said. “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.”
A friend confirmed the account of the incident to Variety.
A third woman, who decided to stay anonymous, also said Hoffman assaulted her while working on “Ishtar,” but said she later had a consensual sexual encounter with the actor. She was 22 at the time and had a non-speaking role in the film and at one point was asked to come to set. She observed the end of the shoot and went to a wrap party which she was asked to stay for. At 1 a.m., the woman said, Hoffman offered her a ride home but the station wagon was quickly filling up with other people from the set.
He said they’d get in the way back — they laid down in the back of the station wagon, while she was wearing a skirt.
“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 was dropped near her apartment but the woman said Hoffman gave her $20 to come to his place. She later went, and claimed he performed oral sex on her and they had sexual intercourse.
The woman said the incident in the car was non-consensual, while she responded, “I don’t know” about whether the sexual encounter after was consensual.
Two more women shared stories about Hoffman in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, published Thursday. A woman identified as Carolyn worked as a tour guide in Washington D.C. when Hoffman (while shooting “All the President’s Men”) boarded a bus with his assistant, who later told her Hoffman wanted to spend the evening with her. Carolyn went to his hotel that night and he allegedly answered the door shirtless. After long conversations, she expressed her desire to go home and Hoffman allegedly said, “Go home? You don’t think you’re getting out of here without having sex, do you?”
The woman said Hoffman blocked the doorway and presented with her two options, one of which was oral sex: “I can’t remember the other option.”
Another woman identified as Pauline was a TV production stylist based in San Francisco but who grew up in Manhattan. She said she was working in a store when Hoffman came in and asked for help. He would stop by periodically and on one occasion asked her to accompany him to the premiere of his new film “Alfredo, Alfredo.” On another occasion, Hoffman took Pauline to a movie and mentioned he had gotten his daughter a puppy, asking her if she would want to see it. When they went to his house, she discovered there was no puppy.
After showing her his daughter’s room, she said Hoffman unzipped his pants and exposed himself to her, at which point he masturbated in front of her. After he ejaculated, she asked, “Can I go home now?” to which he walked her down the street and hailed a cab.
“I didn’t want to do acting anymore,” Pauline told THR. “I just was turned off. And it terrified me of boys, that’s for sure.”
Hoffman has been accused of sexual harassment and misconduct by three other women. Hoffman was first accused in a guest column by Anna Graham Hunter for The Hollywood Reporter last month. In her piece, Hunter accused Hoffman of attempting to grope her multiple times when she was just 17.
“The Graduate” actor later said in a statement, “I have the utmost respect for women and feel terrible that anything I might have done could have put her in an uncomfortable situation. I am sorry. It is not reflective of who I am.”
Television writer and producer Wendy Riss Gatsiounis became the second woman to publicly accuse Dustin Hoffman of sexual harassment. A third woman said he repeatedly groped her during their work together on a Broadway play, with the actor putting his hand up her slip and one night sticking “his fingers inside” her.
A spokesperson for Hoffman has not yet responded to TheWrap’s request for comment on this story, but Hoffman’s attorney Mark A. Neubauer said in a letter to Variety’s owner Penske Media Corp. that the accusations were “defamatory falsehoods.”