A woman has accused Bob Dylan of sexually assaulting her in 1965, when she was 12 years old.

The Nobel prize laureate is being sued for assault, battery, false imprisonment and infliction of emotional distress in the New York supreme court. 

The woman, referred to in court documents as ‘JC’, alleges that the singer, "exploited his status as a musician to provide [her] with alcohol and drugs and sexually abuse her multiple times.”

The abuse, which is alleged to have taken place at Manhattan's Chelsea Hotel, is claimed to have involved the use of drugs and alcohol to “lower her inhibitions” in order that the musician could “gain her trust and to obtain control over her as part of his plan to sexually molest and abuse [her]”.

Mr Dylan’s spokesman has vigorously denied the allegations, stating that the 56-year-old claim is untrue.  

A temporary legal ‘look back’ window means that the decades old allegations can be brought to trial. 

The star rose to prominence in the 1960s from the Manhattan folk scene. He is regarded as one of the greatest songwriters of all time. 

‘Bob Dylan’ was born Robert Allen Zimmerman in Duluth, Minnesota in 1941. His parental grandparents were Ukrainian Jews who had emigrated to America from Odessa while his mother’s family were Lithuanian Jews. 

Dylan biographer Seth Rogovoy told JointMedia: “Bob was raised in a traditional Jewish household with Yiddish speaking grandparents living in the house with a great-grandfather nearby who would daven every day and study Talmud every afternoon. 

“Bob was exposed to all of this… his family was at the centre of the Jewish community in the town he grew up in.”