Judge dismisses sexual assault lawsuit brought against Steven Tyler

Elyse Jankowski/Getty Images

Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler has some good news on the legal front. A judge in New York has dismissed a sexual assault lawsuit brought by Jeanne Bellino, a model who claimed she was assaulted by Tyler in the summer of 1975 when she was 17. She accused him of forcibly kissing and groping her. 

Bellino filed her suit under New York City’s Victim of Gender-Motivated Violence Protection Act, which granted a two-year window to file suits that would have otherwise fallen outside the usual statute of limitations

In February, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan dismissed her case, suggesting she waited too long to file it and that in order to qualify under the Victim of Gender-Motivated Violence Protection Act, she would have had to show Tyler’s actions posed a “serious risk of physical injury,” but she didn’t.

While Bellino’s lawyers wanted to amend her initial complaint, on April 26, the judge denied their request on the “ground of futility” and dismissed the suit with prejudice, meaning she’d be unable to refile her claims.

Tyler is still facing a lawsuit filed in December 2022 by a woman named Julia Misley, who accused him of sexual assault, assault and battery, and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

Tyler and Misley were in a relationship for three years, starting in 1973, when she was 16 and he was in his 20s. She claimed she was “powerless to resist” the rock star’s “power, fame and substantial financial ability” and said he “coerced and persuaded” her into believing their relationship was a “romantic love affair.”

Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.