Dustin Hoffman allegedly exposed himself to his daughter's 16-year-old classmate, while two other women, one of which went on record, have accused Hoffman of sexual assault, according to a report published by Variety.
One of the accusers, Cori Thomas, was a friend and former classmate of Hoffman’s daughter Karina. The incident occurred in New York City after she, Karina and Hoffman had spent the day together. They went to a hotel from which Thomas’ parents were meant to collect her. When Karina went home, Hoffman took a shower in the hotel room, after which he emerged wearing just a towel, which he dropped.
“He was standing there naked,” she told Variety. “I think I almost collapsed, actually. It was the first time I had ever seen a naked man. I was mortified. I didn’t know what to do. And he milked it. He milked the fact that he was naked. He stood there. He took his time.”
Hoffman eventually put a robe on, according to Thomas, who said the actor then asked her to massage his feet. “I didn’t know that I could say no, so I did it,” she said. “And he kept telling me, ‘I’m naked. Do you want to see?’ ” Thomas said she was “saved” when her mother arrived to collect her. She only told her what happened recently, and she never told Hoffman’s daughter what happened.
Melissa Kester was a recent college graduate when Hoffman allegedly sexually assaulted her while recording audio for the film Ishtar. Her boyfriend was working on music for the film and she and Hoffman ended up talking about their love of theatre. One day at the recording studio, Hoffman was struggling to record a song and jokingly asked her to stand next to him in the booth. He then grabbed and held her close to him.
“And as he’s doing that, he literally just stuck his fingers down my pants,” Kester said. “He put his fingers inside me. And the thing I feel most bad about is I didn’t know what to do. I just stood there. I just froze in the situation like ‘Oh my god, what is happening?’ It’s shocking when that happens to you.” For fear of alerting her boyfriend and the men in the studio, she did not react, but said she “felt like [she]’d been raped.” Kester never told her boyfriend what happened, but says Hoffman called her repeatedly after the alleged incident.
A third woman, who asked to remain anonymous, said that Hoffman assaulted her and manipulated her into a subsequent sexual encounter that left her traumatized. She claims Hoffman “stuck his fingers right up inside of me” while she was sitting with him in the back of a crowded station wagon for a scene on which she was an extra. Later they slept together at a hotel. She says the alleged incident in the car was not consensual, but whether she consented to the hotel encounter, she told Variety, “I don’t know.”
Earlier this year, three women came forward with allegations against Hoffman detailing sexual harassment that they said occurred decades ago.