Second Woman Sues Steven Tyler for Sexual Assault
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A second woman has come forward with allegations that Steven Tyler sexually assaulted her when she was a teenager, according to a lawsuit filed in New York on Thursday.
Jeanne Bellino, a former child model who claimed to have met Tyler in New York in the summer of 1975 when she was 17, alleged in the suit that Tyler, then around 27, violently assaulted her twice the only day they’d encountered one another. The cause of action listed in the suit is gender-motivated violence, and the plaintiff is seeking unspecified damages to be determined by the court.
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Bellino alleges that she met Tyler after a friend had arranged for them to meet Aerosmith at the Warwick Hotel following a fashion show Bellino was working in Manhattan. After Bellino and her friend met Tyler and several unnamed members of his entourage, they all walked down Sixth Avenue together. While walking, Bellino claims she asked Tyler a question about a song lyric, which frustrated Tyler, leading to him forcing her into a phone 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 alleges. “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.”
Bellino further alleges in the suit that “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.” Eventually, the suit says, she freed herself and left the phone booth after raising up her knee and pulling on Tyler’s hair. She allegedly ran out of the phone booth “in shock and fear.”
“Tyler’s bandmates and members of the entourage watched, laughed and did nothing to intercede,” the suit says. The suit alleges this was Bellino’s first sexual experience. Confused and in shock, the suit alleges, Bellino stayed with Tyler and the entourage because she claimed she was relying on her friend for transportation. (An attorney for Tyler and a rep for the band did not immediately reply to requests for comment.)
Per the suit, the group went back to the Warwick Hotel, where again near the hotel’s bar area, Tyler allegedly forcibly kissed Bellino and grinded against her. Again, the suit claims, Bellino resisted. Tyler then allegedly whispered into her ear that he was “going in my room to do something quick,” and that he’d call her to come to the room after.
Eventually, while Bellino claims she was sobbing and shaking, Tyler had called down to the lobby and an associate allegedly told her she could go up to his room. Per the suit, Bellino says she was so afraid that she “couldn’t talk and was paralyzed.” She shook her head to the associate and “bolted toward the door,” where a doorman who she says saw the previous act “flung her” into a cab outside the hotel and yelled for the driver to go. Upon getting home, according to the suit, Bellino says she immediately told her sister all the allegations.
Since the alleged incident, Bellino “has suffered and will continue to suffer, great pain of mind and body, severe and permanent emotional distress, physical manifestations of emotional distress, embarrassment, humiliation, physical, personal & psychological injuries,” the suit said. In addition, the lawsuit said that she was hospitalized and medicated as a result of the incident and still needs medication “to cope with the sexual assault and has suffered long-term physical injury associated with the trauma” nearly five decades later.
The suit comes nearly a year after Julia Misley, formerly known as Julia Holcomb, filed a lawsuit in Los Angeles accusing Tyler of sexually assaulting her when she was a teenager in the 1970s. Misley claimed in her suit that Tyler allegedly began assaulting her when she was 16 years old in 1973. Tyler persuaded her parents to grant him guardianship over Misley, she alleged, so that she could travel across state lines with him without criminal prosecution. She further alleged that she was pregnant with Tyler’s child in 1975 when she was 17, and that he persuaded her to get an abortion after she went to the hospital after an apartment fire.
Tyler denied Misley’s allegations, although he didn’t deny having sex with her. He filed an anti-SLAPP motion in May, alleging that Misley consented to the sexual relationship and that her claims were barred “because of immunity to Defendant as caretaker/guardian.” One lawyer who spoke to Rolling Stone at the time of the filing called the immunity response “fucking insane.”
“I want this action to expose an industry that protects celebrity offenders, to cleanse and hold accountable an industry that both exploited and allowed me to be exploited for years, along with so many other naïve and vulnerable kids and adults,” Misley said last year when her suit was filed. “Because I know that I am not the only one who suffered abuse in the music industry, 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.”
During a livestreamed press conference, Bellino’s attorney Jeff Anderson, who is also representing Misley, said that Bellino came forward after reading Misley’s story, in part to support Misley’s claims. He also turned the focus not just on Tyler but on the rest of the music industry as well.
“This suit is not just about the predation of Steven Tyler,” Anderson said. “It’s about the industry that’s continuing to protect him.”
During the conference, Bellino called the alleged assault “violent” and “degrading.” She said she came forward now both to support Misley and to confront those in the industry she said enabled him. “Do they have daughters, do they have children,” Bellino said. “It’s many, many years later, I didn’t forget. Could any woman forget such a thing happening to them? I don’t think so.”
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