A New York lawsuit accusing Steven Tyler of sexually assaulting a model in the Seventies was dismissed on Wednesday, according to court documents reviewed by Rolling Stone.
Judge Lewis Kaplan ruled that plaintiff Jeanne Bellino’s case failed to meet the criteria for New York’s Victims of Gender-Motivated Violence Protection Act because Bellino didn’t allege that Tyler had presented “a serious risk of physical injury” to her.
“We agree with the judge’s reasoning, and are grateful for this result on behalf of our client,” Tyler’s lawyer, David Long-Daniels, told Reuters.
Bellino’s lawyer, Jeff Anderson, claimed that while “Tyler’s lawyers filed the motion to ask the Court to dismiss the lawsuit in early February,” they “failed to serve it on the survivor as required by court rules to allow the Plaintiff to file an opposition.” He added that Bellino will “ask the Court to reinstate the lawsuit.” Anderson reiterated these claims in a letter to the court on Thursday, requesting that the motion to dismiss be stricken.
In her suit, filed days before the deadline of New York’s Adult Survivors Act, Bellino alleged that Tyler had sexually assaulted her multiple times in one day when she met the Aerosmith singer in New York in 1975 when she was 17 years old and he was 27. The suit alleged that Tyler had groped and forcibly kissed Bellino in a phone booth, and later claimed he forcibly kissed her at the Warwick Hotel’s bar area near the lobby.
Bellino claimed in the suit 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 came a year after Julia Misley, formerly Julia Holcomb, sued Tyler in California, accusing him of sexually assaulting her when she was a teenager. 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. (Misley’s case is still ongoing.)
The “Dream On” artist was one of many prominent music industry figures sued over decades-old sexual abuse claims through the Adult Survivors Act. Other artists and executives sued include Axl Rose, Sean “Diddy” Combs, and L.A. Reid. A sexual abuse case against Jimmy Iovine was dismissed earlier this month.