Sexual assault claim against Aerosmith singer Steven Tyler dismissed
US judge says Tyler’s accuser Jeanne Bellino waited too long to sue the 75-year-old over allegations that he groped her in 1975
A lawsuit accusing Aerosmith singer Steven Tyler of sexual assault has been dismissed, after a judge said that his accuser waited too long to sue the US rock star.
Jeanne Bellino, a former model, claimed that Tyler groped her in a Manhattan phone booth when she was 17, before pinning her against a wall later that day and simulating sex.
The incidents were alleged to have taken place while Bellino was working on a fashion show in the summer of 1975, when she claimed that a friend arranged for her to meet Aerosmith at a nearby hotel.
Tyler “vehemently” denied the allegations.
US District Judge Lewis Kaplan said Jeanne Bellino waited too long to sue Tyler, 75, according to Reuters.
He decided that the case did not qualify for a two-year window to submit claims that would otherwise fall outside the usual legal time limit, because the rock singer’s alleged conduct didn’t meet the criteria for posing “serious risk of physical injury”.
Tyler's lawyer, David Long-Daniels, told Reuters: “We agree with the judge's reasoning, and are grateful for this result on behalf of our client.”
The “Dream On” singer has also denied claims in a separate ongoing case filed by another woman in 2022.
He faces allegations of sexual battery and assault of a minor relating to his relationship with Julia Holcomb Misley, then 16, over a three-year period during the Seventies.
Tyler denies Misley’s accusations of assault and battery, but not that he had sex with her. In May last year, his lawyers argued that she could not use his memoirs as cause for “emotional distress”, as it was “free speech and he had not identified her”.
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Tyler discussed a relationship with a teenage girl in two books, published in 2011 and 1997.
In Tyler’s 2011 memoir, Does The Noise in My Head Bother You?, he mentions meeting an unnamed 16-year-old “girlfriend to be.” He wrote that he almost “took a teen bride” and got her parents to sign over custody so he wouldn’t get arrested when she went on tour with him out of state.
The acknowledgements section of Does The Noise In My Head Bother You? thanks “Julia Halcomb,” which Misley has said is a reference to her.
Additional reporting by Associated Press