Grandma the Clown resigns from circus over allegations he forced aerialist, 16, to pose for pornographic photos

Barry Lubin, 65, accused of pressuring trapeze artist Zoe Dunne, now 29, into appearing in pictures supposedly for use as advertising by Japanese tattoo company

Barry Lubin, as "Grandma," performing in the Big Apple Circus in Boston, Massachusetts (Chitose Suzuki/AP)

One of America’s most revered circus performers, Grandma the clown, has resigned from the world-renowned Big Apple Circus after it was revealed that he pressured a 16-year-old aerialist into posing for pornographic photos in 2004.

Barry Lubin, 65, who played Grandma in a wig, pearls and a lumpy red dress to audiences of millions, offered his resignation Friday shortly after the former aerialist contacted the circus to accuse him, said the circus’s chairman, Neil Kahanovitz, on Tuesday.

Lubin, through his lawyer, released a statement on Tuesday night acknowledging and apologising for his conduct. “The allegations,” the statement said, “are true. What I did was wrong, and I take full responsibility for my actions.”

​Kahanovitz told the accuser, Zoe Dunne, after receiving her letter, “We found the allegations put forth in your correspondence very disturbing.”

The circus just finished its annual three-month run at Lincoln Center in Manhattan and will now open in Alpharetta, Georgia, on Friday without its longtime star. Lubin, who spent decades at the pinnacle of his profession, becomes the latest antagonist in the string of sexual-misconduct scandals involving men who have have taken advantage of less powerful people.

Dunne initially contacted the circus about Lubin in 2012. But at that time, he had recently left Big Apple, and a circus official told her they recognised the seriousness of her allegations but that there was little they could do.

Then three months ago, Dunne, now 29, married and pursuing a doctorate in school psychology in Seattle, learned on Facebook that he had rejoined the circus.

“I saw this ad that said ‘Grandma is back!,'” she said Monday, “and I almost threw up on the bus.”

The circus had changed hands in early 2017. Kahanovitz said that he did not know about Dunne’s earlier accusation.

“I was not aware of any allegations until Friday,” he said, adding that no one at the circus whom Dunne had reached out to in 2012 was still with the circus at the time that Lubin was rehired last year.

Dunne said that she first met Lubin at Circus Smirkus, a children’s circus camp in Vermont where Lubin taught as recently as last summer.

She gave the following account:

During Big Apple’s 2004 New York season, Lubin contacted her and offered her work with Big Apple’s mini-troupe for hire. Dunne, then known as Zoey Phillips, had dreamed of a circus career. She was thrilled.

“All I can remember is feeling that it was like this great mentorship opportunity,” she said.

But first, Lubin told her, he had another job for her: modelling, for what he described as his personal photography business.

She came to Lincoln Center, and he escorted her to his trailer.

The photos, Lubin explained, were for a Japanese paint-on tattoo company. First, he had her lie on a bed in a bathing suit and pretend to be sleeping. Then he showed her photos of her favourite actor, Ashton Kutcher, and told her to imagine getting ready for a date with him and to think about how excited she would feel.

“I felt overwhelmingly sad, not excited,” Dunne recalled.

Lubin told her to take off her underwear. She declined, saying she was uncomfortable.

He directed her to change into a thong, spread her legs and hold a paintbrush up to her genital area. The tattoo company, he explained, would superimpose an image of a tattoo on her inner leg.

Barry Lubin (Kathy Willens/AP)

To get the best angle and show the most skin, she needed to pull her underpants to the side, Lubin said.

Dunne complied.

Lubin paid her $100 in cash and warned her not to tell the circus, because they would be angry that he was doing outside work in their trailer.

Lubin scheduled a second photo session. The night before it, she vomited, Dunne said. She told him she could not make it. He insisted, saying that his clients would be mad if he did not send the second round of photos on time.

Dunne returned to the trailer. Lubin told her the first round of photos had gone over well. “They told me that you’re one of the sexiest girls they’ve ever seen,” he told her. Dunne posed again and was paid another $100.

Dunne’s father, Tom Phillips, said that after the photo sessions, “She had a haunted look in her face that I still remember.” But she told her parents that everything was fine.

Then that chapter was over, and Dunne said it was as if it had never happened. Lubin made good on his offer to get her freelance work dancing and tumbling through the air on long silk streamers for Big Apple’s “Circus to Go.” She performed with them several times, she said.

Years went by. Grandma continued to delight children and grown-ups alike, eating popcorn off people’s heads and squirting himself with a malfunctioning hose. He taught physical comedy to college students and was inducted into the Ring of Fame, one of the circus industry’s highest honours.

Around 2008, while in therapy, she told her parents about the photos, Phillips said.

In 2011 or 2012, Dunne said, she went to the police in New York and they told her that the statute of limitations for pursuing any charges had expired. Federal child pornography law forbids the sexually explicit depiction of someone younger than 18, and the definition of sexually explicit is broad. “A picture of a naked child may constitute illegal child pornography if it is sufficiently sexually suggestive,” the Department of Justice’s website says.

Later in 2012, Dunne wrote to Big Apple officials that Lubin had done things to her that were “sexual in nature.” She asked to speak to him in the presence of a Big Apple representative. But Lubin, who joined the circus in 1982, had left.

“Your allegations against Barry Lubin are indeed serious,” the circus’s executive director, Lynn Stirrup, wrote to Dunne. But Lubin was no longer an employee and the circus could not compel him to meet with her, she explained. Dunne let the matter drop.

Last week, when Dunne wrote to Big Apple again, action was swift. Dunne said that on Friday, within hours of the circus’s receiving her letter describing the photos, Kahanovitz wrote back that Lubin had been placed on leave.

Lubin, in his statement, apologised directly to Dunne, using her maiden name, Phillips. “I know that what happened has had a lasting impact on her life, for which I am sorry,” he said. “I not only failed Ms. Phillips, but I also failed in my responsibility as a man, an adult, a father, and as a representative of the Big Apple Circus.”

The New York Times