Timothy Hutton is in an odd situation where life seems to be imitating art.
The famous actor, who played a pioneering fertility doctor in Fox’s Almost Family, where dozens accused him of women of abuse after it was revealed that he used his own sperm to conceive dozens of children; is being accused of rape in real life.
The 59-year-old Oscar-winning actor was accused of the assault by a woman named Sera Johnston, and she told her story to Buzzfeed in an article that was published on Monday that the incident took place in Vancouver in 1983 when she was only 14 years old.
Johnston claimed she was asked to join Hutton in his hotel room, along with some friends, where he gave her alcohol and sexually abused her.
Hutton denied the allegation and claimed that Johnston tried and failed to extort millions of dollars from him over the past two-and-a-half years.
Timothy slammed the piece by saying: “For the past two-and-a-half years, I have been the target of multiple extortion attempts by a woman named Sera Dale Johnston to extract millions of dollars from me. She threatened that if I did not meet her demands, she would go to the press with a false allegation that I sexually assaulted her 37 years ago in Canada. I never assaulted Ms. Johnston.”
He added: “Today, BuzzFeed chose to publish Ms. Johnston’s false story. BuzzFeed knew the truth because they were provided with documented evidence. What’s really going on here is that Ms. Johnston’s extortion attempts failed. She then decided to follow through on her threat to go to the press with her false story. When I became aware of this, I went to the FBI, signed a sworn statement, and filed a criminal complaint against Ms. Johnston for extortion. I will not stop fighting to expose this story for what it is – a failed extortion attempt based on something that never happened.”
Timothy‘s defamation counsel, Tom Clare, also issued a statement saying: “There was no encounter of any kind here, and certainly no sexual assault. The woman featured in the BuzzFeed article, Sera Dale Johnston, has tried to extort millions of dollars from Tim over the last two years. The article was published only after those extortion attempts failed. BuzzFeed, facing serious financial struggles and pressure to attract readers, has shamefully disregarded the facts and allowed itself to be used by Ms. Johnston.”
The statement went on to say: “Buzzfeed knew the truth before publication. For example, BuzzFeed knew that, in July 2019, Tim filed a criminal complaint with the FBI — long before Ms. Johnston made her own report to the police. Further, BuzzFeed recklessly disregarded multiple sworn declarations from neutral third parties that absolutely show Ms. Johnston’s allegations to be false. Besides, BuzzFeed ignored hard evidence that Ms. Johnston lied about participating in extortion attempts and turned a blind eye to critical inconsistencies in Ms. Johnston’s story.”
He concluded: “We will be sending BuzzFeed a legal retraction demand. If BuzzFeed wrongfully refuses to retract the article, Tim is prepared to take any and all necessary steps, including the filing of a defamation lawsuit, to clear his name and to hold BuzzFeed and Ms. Johnston accountable for their reckless and self-serving efforts to destroy Tim’s reputation and career.”
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Fox announced moments ago that the series, Almost Family, has been canceled after one season.
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