Tony-winning Broadway star Alice Ripley, 57, DENIES 'grooming' underage girls and says they 'misinterpreted' her friendship

Daily Mail ^ | 20 August 2021 | Michelle Thompson and James Gordon

[Trillian]

Tony Award-winning Broadway actress Alice Ripley has denied grooming young fans with mental health issues - but says she's sorry for befriending the women then ghosting them.

Four women have accused Tony Award-winning Broadway actress Alice Ripley of 'manipulating' them and running a cult-like base of young fans. The women also made accusations of unsolicited advances.

Ripley vehemently denies 'vile' accusations of grooming, saying the term has made her feel like a sex attacker, and that she inflicted no such abuse on her fans.

'It is a misinterpretation of my actions to say I manipulated anyone, and more shockingly, that there was abuse,' she said in a statement to Page Six.

'Yet here we are on this slippery slope, because terms like 'grooming' are being thrown around … To be accused of this most vile thing, of which I am innocent, is crushing,'

Ripley earned a Tony Award for her betrayal of bipolar character Diana Goodman in Next to Normal in 2009.

She explains how that the performances 'were truly safe spaces for people who had been touched by mental illness.'

Teen girls would flock to the show time and again many of whom 'imprinted their own mothers onto my character, [or] saw themselves in the daughter.'

Ripley said that her interactions with fans would consist of 'a quick hello at the stage door' or '[seeing] people in my dressing room for a couple minutes before or after the show.'

She said that 'on rare occasions' she would 'have a quick meal' with one.

'It's now clear that a few of these fans had their feelings badly hurt because they received attention and then they felt 'ghosted,' by her lack of regard for them subsequently, she added, 'and I truly apologize for that.'

[Gene Eric]

Practically, it makes sense.

[livius]

Is Alice Ripley conservative? I don’t know a thing about her. But if she’s conservative, it would definitely be a set up, especially since she was detailing with girls with problems.

I knew somebody who worked in a shelter for homeless or abused teens, established by a religious order but run by a married couple. Some of the women or girls may have been abused or kicked out of the house, but they were pretty crazy themselves, As you’d expect, they had one girl suddenly announce that she had been assaulted by a male volunteer, who unfortunately had not followed the Mike Pence/Billy Graham rule.

Of course, it was a total lie and easily disproved.

The girl was angry because she had been disciplined (lost a minor privilege or two) for trying to get a young man (a visiting seminarian) off to her bedroom.

So I’d wait to find out more.