A former assistant to Vin Diesel filed a lawsuit against the actor on Thursday, alleging that in 2010 he pinned her against the wall of his hotel suite and masturbated in front of her. Vanity Fair first reported the lawsuit.
Asta Jonasson claims 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 to lie on his bed.
According to the lawsuit, she asked him to stop and headed toward the door, but he approached her and began groping her breasts and kissing her chest. According to Vanity Fair, he tried to pull down her underwear, and she screamed and ran toward the bathroom, according to the lawsuit.
She claims Diesel pressed her against the wall and forced her to touch his erect penis, then began masturbating.
“Ms. Johnson closed her eyes in horror and tried to dissociate from the sexual assault and avoid angering him,” the suit says.
Hours later, according to the lawsuit, Samantha Vincent, Diesel’s sister and the president of his company, called Johnson 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.
Representatives for Diesel did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Jonasson filed the sexual assault claim under California’s Sexual Assault Accountability and Concealment Act, a 2022 law that created a one-year window to bring certain claims that may be outside the statute of limitations. For a claim to be eligible, the defendant must have engaged in an attempt to cover up at least one prior allegation of sexual assault.
The lawsuit alleges that a few days before the diesel incident, Jonasson was presented with a proposal by another supervisor at his company, One Race. According to the complaint, the supervisor called her to his room at the St. Regis, took off his shirt, climbed into bed and said, “Come here.” She left the room, according to the complaint.
. “Professional creator. Lifelong thinker. Reader. Beer buff. Troublemaker. Evil problem solver.”