In a lawsuit, a woman says that the Aerosmith frontman groped and fondled her in a New York phone booth when she was about 17.
For the second time in the past year, Steven Tyler has been accused in a lawsuit of sexually assaulting a teenage girl in the 1970s, when his band Aerosmith was rising to fame.
In the new lawsuit, which was filed in New York on Thursday, Jeanne Bellino accuses Mr. Tyler of assaulting her twice in one day in approximately 1975, when she was about 17 years old and a model living in Queens. He would have been in his late 20s at the time.
While Ms. Bellino was visiting Manhattan for work, the lawsuit says, a friend arranged for them to meet Aerosmith. As Ms. Bellino was walking down the street with Mr. Tyler and his entourage, which included his bandmates, he forced her into a phone booth, where he aggressively kissed, groped and fondled her, according to the lawsuit.
“Others stood by outside the phone booth laughing and as passers-by watched and witnessed, nobody in the entourage intervened,” the lawsuit says.
Because Ms. Bellino did not have money for transportation home, according to the suit, she was taken to the Warwick Hotel with Mr. Tyler and his entourage. The lawsuit says Mr. Tyler pinned her against a wall in a public area and again assaulted her. Shortly after, a doorman at the hotel helped her get into a cab and flee.
“He never even asked me what my name was,” Ms. Bellino said of Mr. Tyler in a news conference on Thursday.
A representative for Aerosmith did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Ms. Bellino’s lawsuit was filed under a New York City law that in March opened a two-year window for people to accuse someone of gender-motivated violence that would otherwise be beyond the statute of limitations.
In a lawsuit filed in Los Angeles in December, Julia Misley accused Mr. Tyler of using his status and power to “groom, manipulate, exploit” and “sexually assault” her over the course of three years, starting in 1973, shortly after her 16th birthday. Ms. Misley said in her lawsuit that she had met Mr. Tyler at an Aerosmith concert in Portland, Ore., and that the musician had persuaded her mother to let him become her legal guardian.
Mr. Tyler, who is now 75, wrote about sexual encounters with a teenager in his 2011 autobiography, “Does the Noise in My Head Bother You?,” saying that he gained custody of a person who nearly became his “teen bride.”
Source: Music - nytimes.com
