Aerosmith singer Steven Tyler has been charged with sexually assaulting a minor in a new lawsuit brought by his former girlfriend, Julia Holcomb.
Tyler, then 27, began dating Holcomb shortly after her 16th birthday in 1975. Holcomb’s mother relinquished her guardianship to Tyler, and the two moved into Tyler’s home in Boston together. She quickly became pregnant, but their relationship then degenerated. Their apartment caught fire and she ended up in the hospital, during which time Tyler allegedly forced her to have an abortion. “When I got home to my mom, I was a broken spirit,” Holcomb recounted in a 2011 essay. “I couldn’t sleep at night without nightmares of abortions and fires. The world seemed like a dark place.
For his part, Tyler maintains that the couple jointly decided to abort the fetus. “It was a big meltdown. It’s a big thing when you grow something with a woman, but they convinced us it would never work and 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 his lawsuit (via page 6), Holcomb says she first met Tyler – who is identified as the accused Doe – at an Aerosmith concert in Portland. Holcomb claims Tyler was aware of her age before inviting her to his hotel, where he “committed various acts of criminal sexual conduct on” her. Holcomb had a second meeting with Tyler after an Aerosmith concert in Seattle, after which Tyler convinced Holcomb’s mother to name him as her legal guardian.
Holcomb further claims that Tyler repeatedly assaulted her and supplied her with alcohol and drugs, and once she got pregnant, she threatened to stop supporting her if she didn’t. abort.
In her lawsuit, Holcomb also accuses Tyler of subjecting her to “unintentional infamy” by discussing their relationship in her memoir and describing it as a “romantic and 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 present their claims. The deadline to file a complaint is December 31, 2022.
Tyler has yet to respond to the lawsuit.
