Andy Dick. Photo courtesy of Variety.
Summary: Comedian Andy Dick was charged with sexual battery in Los Angeles.
During the #MeToo movement, Andy Dick was accused of gross behavior on set, and this week, TMZ reports that the comic actor has been charged with sexual battery for groping a stranger in Los Angeles.
The victim said that Dick had grabbed her butt while she was walking down the street in April, and he had made lewd comments at her. The LA City Attorney charged Dick with misdemeanor sexual battery and misdemeanor battery.
Dick’s wife said in February that the actor has been drinking a lot lately and has threatened suicide. According to TMZ, Lina Sved filed for a protective order against Dick to keep him away from her and their two children.
Sved said that Dick is bipolar and gets abusive when drinking.
Dick is scheduled to be arraigned on July 18, according to CBS News.
The legal documents from his recent charges stated, Dick “did willfully and unlawfully touch an intimate part of another … against his or her will for the specific purpose of sexual arousal, sexual gratification, and sexual abuse.”
Dick, 52, has been arrested for other groping charges, but they were dismissed after he completed a pretrial diversion program.
Dick is best known to the public for starring on the TV show Newsradio that aired in the 1990s. But in Los Angeles, The Daily Beast said that the comic’s weird behavior made him an entertainment legend, perhaps infamously.
The Daily Beast reported that in 2006, Dick licked Farrah Fawcett, Carrie Fisher, and Patton Oswalt backstage of the Comedy Central Roast for William Shatner. In 2007, he appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live with guest Ivanka Trump. While Trump was trying to do her interview, Dick ran his hands up and down her leg. Kimmel asked Dick to stop, but the comic refused until he was finally escorted off the stage.
In 2008, Dick fondled a teenager in the parking lot of a Buffalo Wild Wings, and in 2010, he was arrested for grabbing a bouncer and groping a male guest at a nightclub. Similar behavior continued for years, but Dick was allowed to work again and again on film and TV sets as well as in comedy clubs.
But after the Harvey Weinstein story was published in The New York Times in October of 2017, Hollywood finally said enough to Andy Dick. In October, Dick was kicked off the set of Raising Buchanan for touching people’s genitals and trying to kiss members of the crew.
Dick has yet to comment on his recent charges, but regarding the others, The Daily Beast reported him saying, “I didn’t grope anybody. I might have kissed somebody on the cheek to say goodbye and then licked them. That’s my thing—I licked Carrie Fisher at a roast. It’s me being funny. I’m not trying to sexually harass people.”
- Harvey Weinstein Charged with Six Additional Sex Crimes in New York
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