MORE THAN 200 women have contacted the LA Times with sexual harassment claims against US film director James Toback, according to the paper.
The allegations, most of which are yet to be verified, come just two days after the Times published an investigation into the director, in which 38 women claimed that the 72-year-old had sexually harassed them.
The paper said that the majority of the new accounts describe Toback approaching women on the street of Manhattan, offering them the chance at a part in an upcoming movie, and a wide range of unwanted sexual advances.
Toback has not responded to the latest allegations published in the Times. He denied the allegations published in the original report, saying he had never met the women, or if he did it “was for five minutes and [I] have no recollection”.
He also claimed that for the last 22 years it had been “biologically impossible” for him to engage in the behaviour he is accused of.
Along with the latest accounts of harassment received by the Times, a number of phone calls have been made to the Los Angeles Police Department relating to Toback in the last few days, a detective told the paper.
Thirty-one of the women spoke on the record in the original report, including Louise Post, who is a guitarist and vocalist for the band Veruca Salt, and As the World Turns actress Terri Conn.
Actress Echo Danon recalled an incident on the set of his film Black and White where Toback put his hands on her and said that he would ejaculate if she looked at his eyes and pinched his nipples.
“Everyone wants to work, so they put up with it,” Danon told the Times.
That’s why I put up with it. Because I was hoping to get another job.
Since the first report, NBC Today Show host Natalie Morales has also spoken out against Toback, writing on Twitter: “…add one more. Exact same playbook by James Toback when I encountered him near Central Park.”
“In all honesty, I thought he was just a creep hitting on me with the oldest line in the book,” Morales told the Times.
“I said on our show I was just lucky. I saw pretty quickly what he was up to,” she said.
https://twitter.com/NMoralesNBC/status/922526948273700864
Harvey Weinstein
The report comes amid the ongoing downfall of producer Harvey Weinstein, who has been accused of sexual harassment and assault by over three dozen women. He was fired from the company he co-founded and widely denounced by his Hollywood peers.
Yesterday, an actress filed suit against The Weinstein Company, alleging that Weinstein sexually assaulted her and that the company had enabled his behaviour.
Weinstein was sacked as co-chairman of The Weinstein Company on 8 October but had continued to hold a seat on the board until now.
Dominique Huett charges in her suit – the first to be filed since the Weinstein scandal broke earlier this month – that she met Weinstein at the Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills in November 2010 to discuss career opportunities.
The actress, who starred in an episode of the TV series Blue Bloods in 2015, says that the now-disgraced movie mogul lured her into his hotel room and then insisted she give him a massage.
She initially refused but he would not take “no” for an answer and she finally complied, the lawsuit filed in Los Angeles Superior Court states.
Huett says Weinstein then performed oral sex on her, also refusing to take “no” for an answer.
“After performing oral sex on the plaintiff, Weinstein masturbated in front of plaintiff until he reached orgasm,” it added.
The lawsuit charges that The Weinstein Company (TWC) was complicit in the abuse the entertainment mogul allegedly committed, in that it had known for years of his “repeated acts of sexual misconduct with women.”
With reporting by AFP.
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