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A lawsuit accusing Steven Tyler of sexually assaulting a 17-year-old girl in 1975 was dismissed by a judge on Wednesday, Deadline reports.
In the suit, which was filed in November, Jeanne Bellino alleges that the Aerosmith frontman, who was 27 at the time, sexually assaulted her twice when the pair met in 1975, first in a phone booth and then at the Warwick Hotel, by groping and forcibly kissing her.
Bellino’s suit was brought under New York City’s Victims of Gender-Motivated Violence Protection Act, which extended the statute of limitations for older cases. However, the judge ruled that Bellino’s case didn’t qualify for the two-year window for older incidents, because she didn’t “allege conduct presenting a serious risk of physical injury.”
In response, Bellino’s counsel released a statement saying, “Tyler’s lawyers filed the motion to ask the Court to dismiss the lawsuit in early February but failed to serve it on the survivor as required by court rules to allow the Plaintiff to file an opposition. The Plaintiff, Jeanne Bellino, will ask the Court to reinstate the lawsuit.”
The suit was one of two pending against Tyler. The other was filed in California in 2022 by a woman who says she had a sexual relationship in 1973 with Tyler while she was 16, and is still in process.
