More sleazy sex claims

THE Hollywood sex abuse scandal has widened with 38 women said to have accused US film director James Toback of unwanted sexual encounters over a period of decades.

Toback reeled them in with boasts about his movie career and connections, as well as claims he could make them a star, according to accounts to the Los Angeles Times.

Following the publication of its story, the paper said it was inundated with emails and phone calls from more than 200 additional women, though most of the new accounts have not yet been verified.

The accounts did, however, follow the pattern uncovered in its investigation: in meetings framed as interviews or auditions, Toback allegedly would turn disturbingly personal, with questions veering to masturbation and pubic hair.

“He told me he’d love nothing more than to masturbate while looking into my eyes,” Louise Post, who met Toback in 1987 while attending Barnard College, told the Times.

“Going to his apartment has been the source of shame for the past 30 years, that I al- lowed myself to be so gullible,” said Post, who is now a guitarist and singer for Veruca Salt, an indie rock band.

Toback denied the allegations, telling the Times he had never met the women, or if he

did, it “was for five minutes and (I) have no recollection.”

Toback, 72, has been a writer and director since 1974. His movie, The Private Life of a

Modern Woman, starring Sienna Miller, premiered at this year’s Venice Film Festival.

In 1987, he made the semiautobiographical The Pick-up

Artist, and other credits include the Oscar-nominated screenplay for Bugsy, directed by Barry Levinson and starring Warren Beatty and Annette Bening.

The Times said it interviewed all 38 women separately — 31 on the record — as well as people they had spoken with about the incidents at the time. None had reported the encounters to the police at the time.