Update April 5: In April, Tyler filed a response to the suit which claims their relationship was consensual. Tyler is asking for a dismissal of the lawsuit, claiming Holcomb “has not suffered any injury or damage as a result of any action by Defendant.â€
Original story follows.
Steven Tyler has been accused of sexual assault, sexual battery, and intentional infliction of emotional distress of a minor in a new lawsuit filed in Los Angeles. According to a Rolling Stone report, plaintiff Julia Holcomb has alleged that the Aerosmith front man began a sexual relationship with her when she was 16 years old in 1973. In the lawsuit, she claims Tyler learned of her troubled home life and later convinced her mother to grant him guardianship, which let him “travel with, assault and provide alcohol and drugs†to her while she was a teen. She alleges she “was powerless to resist†Tyler’s “power, fame and substantial financial ability, and that he “coerced and persuaded†her into believing the relationship was “a ‘romantic love affair.’†Holcomb also accuses Tyler of insisting she get an abortion after she got pregnant with his child at age 17. Allegedly, he cited health concerns from a recent apartment fire and threatened to stop supporting her if she did not end the pregnancy.
Although the lawsuit does not identify Tyler by name, Holcomb has previously made these claims in anti-abortion rallies and public interviews. The filing also quotes directly from Tyler’s memoir, in which he wrote that 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.†He described her as his “heart’s desire, my partner in crimes of passion,†noting that his “bad self†was 26 at the time. Holcomb alleges she did not consent to being mentioned in the memoir’s acknowledgments, which reference a “Julia Halcomb†— one letter off from her name. News of this lawsuit comes just days before the December 31 deadline for California’s 2019 Child Victims Act, which temporarily lifted the statute of limitations to allow survivors of childhood sexual abuse to come forward with allegations.Representatives for Tyler, now 74, did not immediately respond to Vulture’s request for comment.