Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler faces lawsuit over sexual assault allegations from 1970s
Steff Thomas
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Steven Tyler is now facing a lawsuit over sexual assault allegations that stem from what his accuser called an illicit sexual relationship with the Aerosmith frontman when she was only 16.
Julia Misley, 65, filed the charges, which include intentional infliction of emotional distress, sexual battery, and sexual assault, against the rock star on Tuesday.
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Misley, known then as Julia Holcomb, said she wanted to seize the opportunity to take “legal action.”
“I want this action to expose an industry that protects celebrity offenders, to cleanse and hold accountable an industry that both exploited and allowed me to be exploited for years, along with so many other naive and vulnerable kids and adults,” she wrote in a statement.
Tyler “used his role, status, and power as a well-known musician and rock star to gain access to, groom, manipulate, exploit, [and] sexually assault” Misley over a period of three years, resulting in “severe emotional injury,” according to the lawsuit.
In her allegations, Misley said the two met at a 1973 show in Portland, Oregon, and she was later invited to his hotel room at only 16 years old — when Tyler was 25 or 26. The court documents indicated it was then that he got involved in “various acts of criminal sexual conduct.”
The acts continued, Tyler eventually became Misley’s legal guardian, and in 1975, she became pregnant and was coerced into having an abortion, the lawsuit states.
Misley also blasted the musician for publishing detailed parts of their relationship in his memoirs without permission or knowledge. Doing so subjected her to public attention and scrutiny, which retraumatized her, she argued in her case.
In one of his books, Tyler mentions an unnamed 16-year-old “girlfriend” and that he almost “took a teen bride.”
While her lawsuit doesn’t name Tyler specifically, Misley identified him in her statement that followed. She has also detailed her relationship with the singer in two books published in 1997 and 2011.
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Misley said the lawsuit is her way to “stand in solidarity with the other survivors.”
“I hope that, from this action, we can make the music industry safer, expose the predators in it and expose those forces in the industry that have both enabled and created a culture of permissiveness and self-protection,” she said.
The case comes near the expiration of a three-year window that a 2019 California law gave adult victims of childhood assault to file lawsuits for decades-old claims.