diff --git a/changes/bug19556 b/changes/bug19556
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000..f4ac894f46
--- /dev/null
+++ b/changes/bug19556
@@ -0,0 +1,7 @@
+  o Minor bugfixes (sandboxing):
+    - When sandboxing is enabled, we could not write any stats to
+      disk.  check_or_create_data_subdir("stats"), which prepares the
+      private stats directory, calls check_private_dir(), which also
+      opens and not just stats() the directory.  Therefore, we need to
+      also allow open() for the stats dir in our sandboxing setup.
+      Fixes bug 19556.
diff --git a/src/or/main.c b/src/or/main.c
index f585f0be62..0562f84242 100644
--- a/src/or/main.c
+++ b/src/or/main.c
@@ -3568,6 +3568,7 @@ sandbox_init_filter(void)
              get_datadir_fname2("keys", "secret_onion_key_ntor.old"));
 
     STAT_DATADIR("keys");
+    OPEN_DATADIR("stats");
     STAT_DATADIR("stats");
     STAT_DATADIR2("stats", "dirreq-stats");
   }