Second Woman Sues Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler for Sexual Assault
A lawsuit filed in New York alleges that Tyler assaulted a former model twice in one day in 1975.
Another woman has sued Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler for sexual assault. The lawsuit was filed Thursday in New York.
According to a report from Rolling Stone, who viewed the court documents, former model Jeanne Bellino alleges she met Tyler in the summer of 1975 at a fashion show in Manhattan. At the time, she was 17 years old; Tyler would have been 27. Bellino claims she knew Tyler for one day, during which he assaulted her twice. She is suing him for “gender-motivated violence” and seeking unspecified damages to be determined at the court’s discretion.
According to Bellino, she attended an event with a friend at the Warwick Hotel. Afterward, it was arranged for them to meet Tyler and his entourage. As the group was walking down Sixth Avenue, Bellino asked Tyler a question about the lyrics to one of his songs. Incensed, he allegedly threw Bellino into a telephone booth.
“While holding her captive, Tyler stuck his tongue down her throat, and put his hands upon her body, her breasts, her buttocks, and her genitals, moving and removing clothing and pinning her against the wall of the phone booth,” the suit claims. “As Tyler was mauling and groping Plaintiff, he was humping her pretending to have sex with Plaintiff. Others stood by outside the phone booth laughing and as passersby watched and witnessed, nobody in the entourage intervened.”
According to The Daily Mail, the suit alleges that Bellino could feel “Tyler’s penis was erect and it was evident to her as he rubbed it against her that he was not wearing underwear and wearing thin pants…Plaintiff fought back and struggled to be free but Tyler restrained her.”
The group then returned to the Warwick Hotel. Bellino returned with the entourage because she was still relying on her friend to take her home. At the bar, she claims Tyler once again cornered her, rubbing himself against her and forcibly kissing her.
Tyler allegedly whispered into Bellino’s ear that he was “going in my room to do something quick,” and that he would summon her there momentarily. Bellino recalls that at this point she “couldn’t talk and was paralyzed” with fear. She sobbed as she waited in the lobby, not knowing what to do. Eventually, Tyler called down and an associate of his told the teenager she could see herself up.
Bellino reports that at this point she “bolted toward the door,” which was manned by a doorman who had seen Tyler’s allegedly lewd act at the bar. Bellino says this person “flung her” into a waiting taxi, and instructed the driver to leave immediately. Bellino says she immediately told her sisters of the allegations when she returned home.
Bellino’s counsel says that their client was medicated and hospitalized in the wake of the alleged incident. She still needs medication almost 50 years later, they say, “to cope with the sexual assault and has suffered long-term physical injury associated with the trauma.”
The suit comes almost a year after a Los Angeles woman, Julia Misley, sued Tyler for allegedly assaulting her in 1973 when she was just 16 years old. Misley claims Tyler convinced her parents to grant him guardianship over the teen so that she could travel with him over state lines without fear of criminal prosecution.
In May, Tyler filed an anti-SLAPP motion, claiming that Misley consented to their sexual relationship. He also claims her allegations should be barred “because of immunity to Defendant as caretaker/guardian.”
“I know that I am not the only one who suffered abuse in the music industry,” Misley said in a statement at the time of her filing, according to The New York Times. “I feel it is time for me to take this stand and bring this action, to speak up and stand in solidarity with the other survivors.”
Tyler has yet to respond to the latest allegations.