Dec 22, 2023
Vin Diesel Faces DISTURBING Allegations From Ex-Assistant
Vin Diesel Faces DISTURBING Allegations From Ex-Assistant
- 14 minutes
Vin Diesel, movie star mega Rich,
super famous sued now for
alleged sexual battery of an assistant.
Former assistant Vin Diesel
sued the actor on Thursday,
[00:00:16]
alleging that in 2010 he
pinned her against a wall
inside a hotel suite and
pleasured himself in front of her.
Those are the details,
there are more details emerging.
The plaintiff Asta Jonasson,
[00:00:32]
stating that she was hired by Diesel's
company, one race, to work for
the actor on location in Atlanta,
where Fast Five was in production.
The suit describes Jonasson as a recent
film school program graduate at the time,
[00:00:48]
whose job responsibilities
included organizing parties,
accompanying diesel to parties, and
ensuring that she was in close physical
proximity to him in case photographs were
taken of him with women when he attended
events without his longtime girlfriend,
Vanity Fair with the reporting here.
[00:01:08]
The suit alleges that late
one night in September 2010,
Jonasson was asked to wait
in Diesel's suite at the St.
Regis hotel while he entertained hostesses
he had brought back from a club.
Once the other women were gone,
the lawsuit claims, Diesel, quote, grabbed
[00:01:23]
Miss Jonasson's wrists, one with each of
his hands, and pulled her onto the bed.
She asked him to stop,
escaped his grasp, and
waited by the front door of the suite for
him to leave.
Instead, the lawsuit says,
he again approached Jonasson,
[00:01:40]
began to grope her breast and
kiss her chest despite her pleas to stop.
Miss Jonasson was afraid to more
forcibly refuse her supervisor, knowing
that getting him out of that room was
both crucial to her personal safety and
job security.
[00:01:56]
The suit continues, but this hope died
when Vin Diesel dropped to his knees,
pushed Miss Jonasson's dress
up toward her waist and
inappropriately touched her body,
running his hands over Miss Jonasson's
upper legs, including her inner thighs.
[00:02:13]
He tried to pull down her underwear and
she screamed and ran toward the bathroom,
the suit alleges.
Jonasson alleges that Diesel
pressed against the wall and
forced her to touch his private parts,
then began to pleasure himself.
Miss Jonasson was unable to escape and
closed her eyes,
[00:02:30]
scared of angering Vin Diesel
by rejecting him further and
trying to disassociate, wishing this
assault would end, the suit alleges.
Hours later, according to the lawsuit,
Samantha Vincent, Diesel's sister and
[00:02:46]
the president of his company,
called Jonasson and fired her.
It was clear to her that she was being
fired because she was no longer useful,
and Diesel had used her to
fulfill his sexual desires and
she had resisted his sexual assaults,
the suit alleges.
[00:03:05]
Ms Jonasson felt like she was
a piece of trash to be discarded.
Ms Jonasson felt helpless,
her self esteem demolished,
and she questioned her own skills and
whether a successful career would require
her to trade her body for advancement.
[00:03:22]
Again, variety with
these explosive details,
the suit alleges that a few days
before the diesel incident,
Jonasson was propositioned by another
supervisor at his company, one race.
According to the complaint, the supervisor
summoned her to his hotel room
[00:03:37]
at the St Regis, took off his shirt,
got into bed and said, come here.
Appalled, Miss Jonasson immediately exited
the room and the hotel, the suit states.
In addition to the sexual
battery allegation,
the suit also states claims
of gender discrimination,
[00:03:55]
wrongful termination, retaliation,
and negligent supervision.
Jonasson filed the sexual battery lawsuit
under California's Sexual Abuse and
Cover up Accountability Act.
It's a 2022 law that created
a one year window to file certain
[00:04:12]
suits that would otherwise be outside
of the statute of limitations.
For the suit to qualify, the defendant
must have engaged in an attempt
to cover up at least one previous
sexual assault allegation.
[00:04:27]
Let's get Diesel's attorney, if we can.
Here's the statement issued Thursday
afternoon denying these allegations.
Let me be very clear.
Vin Diesel categorically denies this
claim in its entirety, Freedman said.
[00:04:42]
This is the first he has ever heard
about this more than 13 year old
claim made by a purportedly
nine day employee.
There's clear evidence which completely
refutes these outlandish allegations.
Brian Freedman, Ben Diesel's attorney,
again, variety with the reporting here.
[00:05:02]
Brian Freedman is a powerful attorney,
represents a lot of big names and
is a tough cookie, okay.
So Vin Diesel keeps lawyers,
I'm sure, on retainer.
He's hired this powerful
lawyer to defend him.
[00:05:19]
And again, he's denying all of this.
I wasn't there, you weren't there.
Here we go again.
And I guess I wanna start with seeking
your insight into where we should begin,
where we should even weigh in as
a public who was not party to this.
[00:05:40]
But it is long standing now
that we've had to go through
this kind of thing with powerful men and
young women.
>> Speaker 1: Right, I think that a good
place to start is what she was hired to do
[00:05:55]
in the first place for his company,
which was attend parties in case he's
photographed with women that weren't his
longtime girlfriend, which heavily implies
they wanted to be able to appoint to a
woman and say, this is simply an employee.
[00:06:10]
He's not cheating on his girlfriend,
which is a bizarre reason to hire
somebody in the first place.
Sort of pointing in the direction of her
job, being sexualized from the start.
And this is, as you mentioned, a young
woman fresh out of film school who's
[00:06:28]
looking for
an opportunity in this industry.
And she believes she found one only for
her to allegedly be the victim of
this very brutal sexual assault
at the hands of a man significantly
more powerful than her.
I would like to point out that these
types of laws that give victims of sexual
[00:06:46]
harassment, sexual assault,
the ability to sue outside of the statute
of limitations are so important.
And we saw the same thing out of New York.
They allowed people outside of
the statute of limitations to sue for
a year, and we saw a lot of
lawsuits against powerful men.
[00:07:04]
And a lot of the victims in those
cases were very young at the time that
the alleged assaults occurred.
And it's important to note that especially
they're disproportionately less
powerful than the people who allegedly
perpetrated the assaults against them.
[00:07:21]
And it might take them quite a bit of
time to come to terms with what happened
to them, to recognize that it was
sexual assault, to move past the stage
of blaming yourself for being a victim,
to even feel like you're in a good
[00:07:36]
position to acknowledge what happened
to you and to take legal recourse.
So I think that these types of
laws are really valuable, and
I'd like to see them expanded all across
this country so that we get more victims.
[00:07:52]
The ability to seek justice,
especially when it takes some
victims a long time to process that.
And she was at the time, a very young
girl who lost a job after only nine days.
And I'll just know from my personal
perspective, Vin Diesel is someone who
[00:08:10]
has a history of well being
interviewed by female journalists and
female reporters being overly
sexual in those interviews,
in sexualizing the people
interviewing him.
That's not to say that that's necessarily
evidence that the allegations are true,
[00:08:26]
but he's been able to get away
with that behavior on camera for
years when these should be professional
interviews and he should behave,
conduct himself in a professional manner.
I just think that goes to show how
much this industry protects men who
[00:08:42]
are inappropriate towards women.
>> Speaker 1: Yeah, and it might speak
to society as well, devil's advocate,
the Diesel.
Others in Hollywood would say, well,
I'm a sex symbol, I'm an action star.
I'm an international movie star, okay?
[00:08:57]
I can't walk down the street.
There's certain things
that are protocol for
me that an average Joe
perhaps wouldn't understand.
I'm so tired, though,
ray of people, mostly men, but
also women, pointing to, well,
why didn't you come forward?
[00:09:14]
How ignorant are you, this is 2023.
We're almost 2024, right?
How ignorant are you?
People want to be able to realize their
dreams, to work support themselves.
And they sometimes just say cost benefit,
okay?
[00:09:33]
No one's going to believe me.
I'm gonna get called names, I'm gonna
be first and foremost a gold digger,
probably a slut.
That's what we do to people,
it's disgusting.
So if you don't get it, I suggest you
pick up, I don't know, a psychology book,
read some old court cases, something,
or talk to somebody close to you,
[00:09:52]
and I guarantee that one of
those women will tell you.
It happened to me.
I remember being a young person and
someone who was sued and
paid out their company at the time.
Yet another record settlement, and
he would summon me to his office.
[00:10:10]
He was a very blowhard man, okay?
Prime time is when he came on.
And I didn't ask you to put
your tongue down my throat.
I was fresh out of grad school.
Didn't ask you for any of that.
We'll do it live, okay?
[00:10:26]
I didn't ask you for any of that and
I didn't come forward, okay?
And perhaps it's unfair all these years
later to allude to it, but it's my truth,
and I'm entitled to my story, too.
This woman's entitled to her story.
I don't know if it's true.
Let me ask you this,
we've heard this so many times.
[00:10:43]
There are regulations, there are strikes,
there are unions in Hollywood.
Put your legal cap on and tell me,
is it time for assistance?
And these supportive staff members,
not just on set,
these superstars and
even their less known or
[00:11:01]
less successful counterparts
have these assistants.
Is it time for there to be protections for
these young people who often want
the limelight and they want to get there?
There's a lot of stars who
used to be assistants.
[00:11:16]
What can be done here?
>> Speaker 2: I think that's an excellent
question because theoretically, right,
we have laws in place that are supposed to
protect individuals in this industry from
sexual harassment, but
they don't necessarily work.
And we see a similar power dynamic
in workplaces outside of Hollywood,
[00:11:36]
outside of the film industry,
or even cable news industries,
where there are individuals with
disproportionate amount of power.
And those individuals abuse that power,
sexually harass, sexually abuse
employees that are under them, and leave
those employees feeling that they have
[00:11:56]
little legal recourse or little
workplace recourse against those claims.
But I think it's even amplified in
Hollywood because, as you mentioned,
there is a dynamic where a lot of
it's a very public facing industry.
A lot of these people want to create
a name for themselves in this industry.
[00:12:12]
You have to work your
way up in that manner.
And so if you are the victim of these
crimes, there's further incentive for
you to stay quiet than there already is,
because just to go back to the point you
were making, so many people say, well,
why did they wait all this time?
[00:12:29]
They're just coming to collect a check.
When in reality, women who have proven in
a court of law that they were the victims
of sexual harassment, workplace sexual
harassment, workplace sexual assault,
are still demonized.
No matter how much evidence there is, no
matter how much proof there is that they
[00:12:44]
were the victims,
they are still demonized.
And this woman,
very bravely know, named herself,
put some focus on herself now, and
she's going to be the victim of
retaliation because Vin Diesel is a very
popular actor with a lot of fans.
[00:12:59]
But I think that you make an excellent
point that there needs to be
increased focus.
And with the too movement,
there was a lot of people who thought,
this is the moment, right?
This is the time where we're gonna
finally conquer this issue, and
they haven't done it.
This is an example of something that
happened years before the too movement.
[00:13:17]
But people are still being the victims
of sexual assault in Hollywood.
We know that for a fact,
we know that that's still happening.
So it is time for
the unions to step up and
to start regulating themselves
in a more meaningful way,
to try to contend more with the issues
within their industry, to try to highlight
[00:13:34]
the accomplishments of women,
promote them for their accomplishments.
And there's a lot to be done,
it's an arduous task.
I wish I did,
I wish I had a solution just to offer.
But it's a work in progress.
[00:13:50]
And as long as it's important that
we continue to cover these stories,
to highlight these stories, and then the
disproportionate blame that these victims
face just for coming forward and
telling their stories.
>> Speaker 1: Yeah, in many ways, it feels
like this is the dirty American way,
[00:14:06]
the way women are treated, discarded.
She was already retaliated against.
If her story is true,
I hate even phrasing it that way.
This is her truth,
she attested to it in a legal document and
has to be played out, investigated.
[00:14:23]
But we're hearing a lot of it, and
I don't know if this is one
more case of a woman abused.
What we heard, if true, is abuse.
How about that, it is.
So we'll keep following the story and
we'll see where we end up on this one.
[00:14:41]
And if there'll be consequences for
either party,
the movie star or the former assistant.
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