A girl who claims to have had a bootleg relationship with Steven Tyler in the Seventies when she was a minor has filed a lawsuit in opposition to the Aerosmith singer, accusing him of sexual assault, sexual battery, and intentional infliction of emotional misery. The lawsuit was filed following California laws that briefly waived statutes of limitations for childhood sexual abuse allegations.
In the swimsuit filed in Los Angeles and obtained by Rolling Stone, the plaintiff Julia Holcomb alleges that Tyler satisfied Holcomb’s mom to grant him guardianship over her when she was 16 years outdated, which consequently allowed her to dwell with him and interact in a sexual relationship. She claims they have been collectively from 1973 till about three years later. The swimsuit itself doesn’t title Tyler, naming the defendants as Defendant Doe 1 and Does 2 via 50. But Holcomb — who Rolling Stone talked about in a 1976 profile of the band in reference to Tyler’s romantic life — has been public about her expertise with Tyler in the previous, and the lawsuit straight quotes from Tyler’s personal memoir. In his ebook, with out stating a title, Tyler equally says he “almost took a teen bride” and that “her parents fell in love with me, signed a paper over for me to have custody, so I wouldn’t get arrested if I took her out of state. I took her on tour with me.”
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In the swimsuit, Holcomb alleges that she “was powerless to resist” Tyler’s “power, fame and substantial financial ability, and that Tyler “coerced and persuaded Plaintiff into believing this was a ‘romantic love affair’”. Holcomb alleges that she met Tyler (who would’ve been 25 on the time of their assembly) simply after her sixteenth birthday when Aerosmith performed a live performance in Portland, Oregon, in 1973. Tyler, in keeping with the swimsuit, took Holcomb again to his resort room, the place they mentioned Holcomb’s age. After he allegedly requested why she was out all night time by herself, Tyler and Holcomb talked about her troubles at dwelling. He then “performed various acts of criminal sexual conduct upon” her earlier than sending her dwelling in a taxi the subsequent morning, the lawsuit states.
Tyler additionally allegedly purchased Holcomb her personal airplane ticket to his subsequent Aerosmith present in Seattle since she was a minor and couldn’t legally journey with him throughout state strains, the swimsuit says. After the Seattle present, Tyler allegedly carried out extra sexual acts on her, and Holcomb flew again to Portland the subsequent morning.
By 1974, because the swimsuit alleges, Tyler satisfied Holcomb’s mom to permit him to turn into her guardian, which might enable him to extra simply journey together with her with out prison prosecution — a timeline that matches Tyler’s personal feedback from his 2011 memoir. Tyler allegedly instructed Holcomb’s mom he would supply higher assist than she was getting at dwelling, promising to enroll her in faculty and provides her medical care. Tyler “did not meaningfully follow through on these promises and instead continued to travel with, assault and provide alcohol and drugs to Plaintiff,” the swimsuit claims.
Holcomb additional alleges that she was pregnant with Tyler’s son in 1975 when she was 17 years outdated however bought an abortion after Tyler insisted she terminate the being pregnant following an condominium fireplace. In making the argument, he cited smoke inhalation and lack of oxygen to the child. Though the swimsuit claims a medical skilled instructed her the unborn child was not harmed by the hearth.
According to the lawsuit, Holcomb was hesitant about going via with the abortion, however Tyler had threatened to cease supporting her if she didn’t proceed with the process. After the abortion, she allegedly left Tyler and went again to Portland to alter her life. She grew to become a religious Catholic, met her husband, and buried her earlier experiences with Tyler till he wrote about them in his ebook.
Holcomb says in the swimsuit that her life was additional disrupted with the publication of Tyler’s memoir, which, with out Holcomb’s consent, referenced his time with an underage woman and subjected her to “involuntary infamy” whereas framing the alleged abuse as a “romantic, loving relationship,” the swimsuit says. Tyler has additionally spoken of a relationship with an underage woman each in his personal memoir and in Aerosmith’s autobiography. The Aerosmith autobiography, revealed in 1997, references the connection, the condominium fireplace, and abortion, however Tyler refers back to the woman as Diana and stated she was 14 on the time they met. In his memoir, nevertheless, he says she was 16, and he writes in regards to the fireplace however not the abortion. In the swimsuit, Holcomb says she’s talked about in the memoir’s acknowledgments which additional eliminated her anonymity. (The ebook’s acknowledgments embody Julia Halcomb, which might be a misspelling of her title.)
“She was sixteen, she knew how to nasty, and there wasn’t a hair on it,” Tyler wrote in his memoir earlier than saying he grew to become the woman’s guardian to keep away from getting arrested if he took her out of state earlier than detailing their sexual endeavors a few pages later. “With my bad self being twenty-six and she barely old enough to drive and sexy as hell, I just fell madly in love with her. She was a cute skinny little tomboy dressed up as Little Bo Peep. She was my heart’s desire, my partner in crimes of passion.”
The lawsuit isn’t the primary time Holcomb has shared these particulars about her alleged expertise with Tyler. Prior to the grievance, she detailed many of the identical allegations in 2011 for the far-right, anti-abortion web site Lifesitenews, and he or she has gone on packages like Tucker Carlson’s present to share her expertise as fodder in opposition to pro-choice advocacy. Holcomb additionally spoke of the expertise in the 2021 documentary Look Away, which centered on sexual abuse in rock music tradition.
“I became lost in a rock and roll culture. In Steven’s world it was sex, drugs, and rock and roll, but it seemed no less chaotic than the world I left behind. I didn’t know it yet, but I would barely make it out alive,” Holcomb wrote in 2011. “I couldn’t consider he was even asking me to have an abortion at this stage. He spent over an hour urgent me to go forward and have the abortion. He stated that I used to be too younger to have a child and it will have mind harm as a result of I had been in the hearth and brought medicine. “
Holcomb’s swimsuit comes in the ultimate days of California’s Child Victims Act, a 2019 piece of laws that lifted the statute of limitations and granted a three-year lookback interval for survivors of childhood sexual abuse to come back ahead with their allegations. The deadline to file a lawsuit is December 31, 2022.
A rep for Tyler didn’t instantly reply to Rolling Stone‘s request for remark.
New York has related laws with the Adult Survivors Act, giving New Yorkers a yr to file lawsuits over sexual misconduct they allegedly skilled in maturity, regardless of when the claimed incident occurred. Since taking impact final month, two ladies have accused the late file govt Ahmet Ertegun of sexual assault in the Nineteen Eighties and Nineties. California additionally handed laws lifting the statute of limitations on grownup sexual abuse instances for a yr beginning on January 1st, 2023.
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