Audrey Hepburn’s eldest son is being sued by a children’s charity he helped establish in his mother’s name.
The Audrey Hepburn Children’s Fund is suing Sean Ferrer in Los Angeles Superior Court, claiming he has interfered with its plans to exhibit several of the Oscar winner’s high fashion dresses and other memorabilia.
The exhibitions are the primary source of money for the charity, which supports children’s centres in hospitals in Los Angeles and New Orleans and a centre in New Jersey.
Ferrer and his half-brother Luca Dotti established the fund after their mother’s death, along with their mother’s longtime companion, Dutch actor Robert Wolders.
Dotti is currently the charity’s chairman.
I dedicate this to the children of the world
The siblings are embroiled in a separate court dispute over division of jewellery, property and other items their mother left them after her death in January 1993.
The lawsuit says that while only one brother has to give permission to display the items, Ferrer has threatened litigation over planned exhibits in Korea and China and also restricted the charity’s access to its website.
The lawsuit claims Ferrer’s actions may force the charity to stop operations and could “irreparably damage the sterling reputation of the late Audrey Hepburn”.
Ferrer, who once ran the charity but stepped aside several years ago, has interfered with potential exhibitions of some of Hepburn’s Givenchy dresses in China and Korea, the lawsuit states.
“The fund is seeking to continue to raise funds in the same way it has done for more than two decades,” its lawyer Steven Young said.
Hepburn won an Academy Award in 1954 for Roman Holiday and was awarded the film academy’s Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award in 1993.
She passed away before that year’s Oscars ceremony, so Ferrer accepted it in herhonour and summarised his mother’s commitment to helping children.
“She believed every child has the right to health, to hope, to tenderness and to life,” he said during the ceremony, according to a transcript on the film academy’s website.
“On her behalf I dedicate this to the children of the world.”