Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler Accused of Sexually Assaulting a Teenager in the 1970s: NPR

Steven Tyler performs at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony in November in Los Angeles. In a complaint filed on Tuesday, a woman claims she was 16 when the singer first sexually assaulted her.

Chris Pizzello/Invision

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Steven Tyler performs at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony in November in Los Angeles. In a complaint filed on Tuesday, a woman claims she was 16 when the singer first sexually assaulted her.

Chris Pizzello/Invision

A woman has filed a lawsuit accusing Steven Tyler, the frontman of rock band Aerosmith, of sexually assaulting her in the 1970s when she was a teenager and he was in his twenties.

Julia Misley, now 65, said in the lawsuit filed Tuesday in Los Angeles Superior Court that Tyler used his rock star status and power to ‘groom, manipulate, exploit, sexually assault’ her during three years. She is asking for an undetermined amount of monetary compensation.

Misley, formerly known as Julia Holcomb, has for years spoken openly about how she says Tyler treated her when she was a teenager. She said she was encouraged to sue by a California state law that temporarily expanded the age at which adults could file civil lawsuits for sexual assault suffered as minors.

“I want this action to expose an industry that protects famous offenders, to clean up and hold accountable an industry that has both exploited and allowed me to be exploited for years, and so many other naïve children and adults. and vulnerable,” Misley said in a statement released Friday by his attorneys.

Misley alleges she first met Tyler just after his 16th birthday when she was invited backstage at an Aerosmith concert in Portland, Oregon in 1973. Tyler would have been 25 at the time. . After the show, according to the lawsuit, a “leading member of a world famous rock band” took Misley to his hotel room, where he “committed various acts of criminal sexual conduct.” The musician then bought Misley a plane ticket to a concert in Seattle, according to the lawsuit, because she could not travel with him across state lines as a minor.

Representatives for Tyler did not immediately return NPR’s requests for comment.

The lawsuit claims that Tyler convinced Misley’s mother to let him become her legal guardian, while promising to enroll her in school and give her better medical care. The singer “did not materially fulfill these promises and instead continued to travel with, assault, and supply the plaintiff with alcohol and drugs,” the lawsuit states.

The details match Tyler’s own words from his memoir. In the book, the rock star describes becoming a guardian to someone who almost became his “young bride,” according to rolling stone, who first broke the news of the lawsuit. He wrote: “Her parents fell in love with me, signed a paper for me to have custody, so I wouldn’t be arrested if I took her out of state. I took her on tour with me.”

Misley, who was eventually pregnant by Tyler, according to the lawsuit, was coerced by him into having an abortion. Writing publicly over a decade ago about their relationship, Misley said she left Tyler in 1977. She later married and became a mother of seven.