Aerosmith singer Steven Tyler has been accused of sexual assaulting a minor in a new lawsuit filed by his former girlfriend, Julia Holcomb.
Tyler, then 27, began dating Holcomb shortly after her 16th birthday in 1975. Holcomb’s mother signed over her guardianship to Tyler, and the two moved in together at Tyler’s Boston home. She soon became pregnant, but then their relationship went south. Their apartment caught on fire, and she ended up in a hospital, during which time Tyler allegedly forced her to have an abortion. “When I returned home to my mother, I was a broken spirit,” Holcomb recounted in a 2011 essay. “I could not sleep at night without nightmares of the abortion and the fire. The world seemed like a dark place.”
For his part, Tyler contends that the couple jointly decided to abort the fetus. “It was a big crisis. It’s a major thing when you’re growing something with a woman, but they convinced us that it would never work out and would ruin our lives,” he wrote in his 2012 memoir. He added that the experience sent him on a downward spiral of drug and alcohol abuse.
In her lawsuit (via Page Six), Holcomb says she first met Tyler — who is identified as Defendant Doe — at an Aerosmith concert in Portland. Holcomb claims that Tyler was aware of her age prior to inviting her back to his hotel, where he “performed various acts of criminal sexual conduct upon” her. Holcomb had a second encounter with Tyler following an Aerosmith concert in Seattle, after which Tyler convinced Holcomb’s mother to appoint him as her legal guardian.
Holcomb further claims that Tyler repeatedly assaulted her, and provided her with alcohol and drugs, and once she became pregnant threatened to stop supporting her if she did not get an abortion.
In her lawsuit, Holcomb also accuses Tyler of subjecting her to “involuntary infamy” by discussing their relationship in his memoir and depicting it as a “romantic, loving relationship.”
The lawsuit comes in the final days of California’s Child Victims Act, which temporarily lifted the statute of limitations for survivors of childhood sexual abuse to come forward with their allegations. The deadline to file a lawsuit is December 31st, 2022.
Tyler has not yet responded to the lawsuit.
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