On Friday, Dustin Hoffman's former Death of a Salesman Broadway co-star Kathryn Rossetter penned an emotional guest column for the Hollywood Reporter detailing the routine of nightly sexual harassment she endured from Hoffman.
In the column, Rossetter describes how the role of a lifetime quickly morphed into "a horrific, demoralizing and abusive experience at the hands (literally) of one of my acting idols." She describes the stomach-turning experience of Hoffman groping her night after night in the wings during each performance.
"It then happened almost every show. Six to eight shows a week. I couldn’t speak to him in the moment because I was on a live mic. He kept it up and got more and more aggressive. One night he actually started to stick his fingers inside me. Night after night I went home and cried," Rossetter wrote.
Rossetter's statement adds to the list of victims who have now come out in accusing Hoffman of sexual assault. Her claim follows one from Anna Graham Hunter, a then-teenage production assistant on set of the movie version of the play, who accused Hoffman of groping her, as well as a playwright who accused Hoffman of making verbal advances and propositioning her to go to a hotel with him.
The allegations against Hoffman add another name to the growing list of alleged abusers in Hollywood. While some may feel that we are becoming desensitized to these daily allegations, it is a monumental time for all the silenced voices of the past and present. Society seems to be on the verge of a new understanding of the prevalence and seriousness of sexual assault, and we can only hope that positive change is on the horizon.
