A former assistant to Vin Diesel sued the actor on Thursday, alleging that in 2010 he pinned her against a wall in a hotel suite and masturbated in front of her. Vanity Fair first reported the lawsuit.
Asta Jonasson alleges that she was working for the actor in Atlanta, where he was filming “Fast Five,” when he brought her to his suite at the St. Regis Hotel and forced her onto his bed.
According to the suit, she asked him to stop and moved toward the door, but he came over to her and began to grope her breasts and kiss her chest. Per Vanity Fair, he tried to pull down her underwear, and she screamed and ran toward the bathroom, according to the suit.
She alleges that Diesel pressed against the wall and forced her to touch his erect penis, and then began to masturbate.
“Terrified, Ms. Jonasson closed her eyes, trying to dissociate from the sexual assault and avoid angering him,” the suit alleges.
Hours later, according to the lawsuit, Samantha Vincent, Diesel’s sister and 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 — Vin Diesel had used her to fulfill his sexual desires and she had resisted his sexual assaults,” the suit alleges.
Diesel’s representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Jonasson filed the sexual battery lawsuit under California’s Sexual Abuse and Cover Up Accountability Act, a 2022 law that created a one-year window to file certain 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.
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 at the St. Regis, took off his shirt, got into bed and said “Come here.” She left the room, according to the complaint.
