Special guest Warren Beatty speaks onstage during the screening of “Heaven Can Wait” during the 2022 TCM Classic Film Festival at the The Hollywood Roosevelt on April 23, 2022 in Los Angeles, California.
A Louisiana woman has filed a sexual assault and abuse claim against an actor reported to be Warren Beatty, alleging that in the 1970s, he coerced her into sexual contact when she was just 14 years old and he was in his mid-30s.
Kristina Charlotte Hirsch filed her complaint against a “Defendant Doe” on Monday in Los Angeles Superior Court, according to court documents. Beatty is not named in the complaint, but it is clear from the description in the filing that it is him.
Hirsch alleges that in 1973, Beatty “used his role, status, and power as a well-known Hollywood Star to gain access to, groom, manipulate, exploit, and coerce sexual contact from her over the course of several months in the State of California.”
“As a result of DEFENDANT DOE’S sexual abuse and assault, Plaintiff Hirsch has suffered severe emotional, physical and psychological distress, including humiliation, shame, and guilt,” the complaint continues. “Plaintiff brings this action to hold DEFENDANT DOE accountable for the serious harm he has caused her.”
The complaint strongly implies that Beatty is the defendant.
“By 1973, DEFENDANT DOE had acted in television and several Hollywood films, including portraying Clyde in ‘Bonnie and Clyde,’ a major box-office success that earned DEFENDANT DOE an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor,” the complaint says. “By 1973 DEFENDANT DOE had acquired wealth, stature and power as a result of his career and status as a movie star.”
Beatty was indeed nominated for a Best Actor Oscar in 1967 for portraying the notorious bank robber Clyde Barrow, although he did not win, losing to Rod Steiger for In the Heat of the Night. Beatty did win a Best Director Oscar in 1981 for the movie Reds.
According to the complaint, Hirsch first met the defendant on a movie set in 1973. She was 14 at the time, the complaint says, and the defendant was around 35 years old. Hirsch had been brought to the movie set by a neighbor.
“On the set, DEFENDANT DOE paid undue attention to the young Plaintiff, commented repeatedly on her looks, gave her his phone number, and instructed her to call him when she was near the hotel in Los Angeles County, California, where he was living at the time,” the complaint says. “Plaintiff was thrilled by the attention and invitation from DEFENDANT DOE. The teenage Plaintiff did as the movie star instructed her to, and called DEFENDANT DOE soon after their first meeting.”
The complaint then describes a series of escalating meetings and encounters that ultimately resulted in sexual contact. Under California law, Hirsch, a minor at the time, would not have had capacity to consent.
“Over the course of 1973, DEFENDANT DOE called Plaintiff on numerous occasions and summoned the teenager to the hotel where he was living to spend time with him,” the complaint says. “DEFENDANT DOE brought Plaintiff with him on car rides, offered to help her with her homework, and spoke to Plaintiff about losing her virginity on multiple occasions.”
Hirsch alleges that the defendant “used his position and status as an adult, and a Hollywood movie star to coerce sexual contact with Plaintiff on multiple occasions, including oral sex, simulated sex and finally coerced sexual intercourse with the minor child.”
“Due to DEFENDANT DOE’s stature, position of authority, predatory grooming and manipulation of Plaintiff, as well as Plaintiff’s young age, Plaintiff was initially thrilled that DEFENDANT DOE was interested in her, and believed she was involved in a romantic relationship with a movie star,” the complaint continues.
Hirsch said that the abuse continued “until late 1973.” She alleges that as a “direct and proximate result of the childhood sexual assault, harassment and abuse committed against [her] by DEFENDANT DOE,” she has suffered “personal physical injury of sexual assault, and has and will continue to suffer, psychological, mental and emotional distress, and all associated economic injury.”
Lawyers for Hirsch would not confirm outright that Beatty is the defendant in the case, but appeared to acknowledge that such a conclusion could be drawn from reading the filing.
“Right now, we are letting the Complaint speak for itself,” an attorney for Hirsch told Law&Crime over email.
Although Hirsch says in her complaint that she is over the age of 40, she was allowed to file the lawsuit under a California law that allows adult survivors of childhood sexual assault to file lawsuits within 22 years of attaining the age of majority or within five years of discovering that “psychological injury or illness occurring after the age of majority was caused by the sexual assault.”
The law also allows childhood sexual assault survivors who do not fall into either of those categories to file an assault or abuse claim within three years of Jan. 1, 2020. Such complaints must be supported by a declaration from a mental health practitioner that “in the practitioner’s professional opinion there is a reasonable basis to believe that the plaintiff had been subject to childhood sexual abuse.” Court records indicate that Hirsch has filed such a declaration confidentially with the court.
You can read the complaint here.
[Image via Jerod Harris/Getty Images for TCM]
