Former assistant sues Vin Diesel for sexual battery

[The following contains descriptions of alleged sexual assault.]

Asta Jonasson, a woman hired by Vin Diesel’s production company One Race in 2010 to work as an assistant for the actor during the production of Fast Five, has filed a lawsuit against Diesel for alleged sexual battery. That comes from Vanity Fair, which says that Jonasson stayed quiet about her accusations until now because she had signed a preemptive nondisclosure agreement when she took the job with One Race, but due to new legal options in California—including the Speak Out Act, which prevents the enforcement of NDAs in cases of sexual assault—she decided to “reclaim her agency and justice for the suffering she endured at the hands of Vin Diesel and One Race.”

Vanity Fair has the details of Jonasson’s accusations from the lawsuit, but it includes a claim that Jonasson was told to wait in Diesel’s hotel room one night in September of 2010 while he “entertained hostesses he had brought back from a club.” Once they were gone and Diesel was alone with Jonasson, she says he grabbed her wrists and forced her onto the bed. When she asked him to stop and got free, she waited by the door for him to leave.

At that point, she alleges, he started to grab her again despite her continuing to ask him to stop. According to the suit, she was concerned about “more forcibly” asking him to stop, since he was her boss and she just wanted him to leave the room, but then he allegedly “dropped to his knees, pushed Ms. Jonasson’s dress up toward her waist, and molested her body, running his hands over Ms. Jonasson’s upper legs, including her inner thighs.”

When Diesel allegedly tried to pull down her underwear, she screamed and ran to the bathroom, at which point he grabbed her again and forced her to touch him, “even as she verbally refused.” She then “closed her eyes, trying to dissociate from the sexual assault and avoid angering him.” The suit then says that Jonasson was fired from her position “hours later” by Diesel’s sister, Samantha Vincent, with Jonasson saying that she believed she was being fired “because she was no longer useful” after Diesel allegedly “used her to fulfill his sexual desires” and because she had “resisted his sexual assaults.”

The suit accuses Diesel and One Race of discrimination on the basis of sex, intentional infliction of emotional distress, hostile work environment, wrongful termination, and retaliation, as well as allegedly attempting to cover up the accusations and of causing Jonasson to suffer “humiliation, emotional distress, and mental and physical pain and anguish.”

Niether Diesel nor One Race have yet to publicly acknowledge the accusations.