Aerosmith singer Steven Tyler has been accused of sexually 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 her guardianship over to Tyler, and the two moved into Tyler’s Boston home together. She soon became pregnant, but then their relationship went awry. Her apartment caught fire and she ended up in a hospital, during which time Tyler allegedly forced her to have an abortion. “When I came home to my mother, I was a broken spirit,” Holcomb said in a 2011 essay. “I couldn’t sleep at night without nightmares about the abortion and the fire. The world seemed like a dark place to me.”
For his part, Tyler claims that the couple decided together to abort the fetus. “It was a big crisis. It’s a big deal to build something with a woman, but they convinced us it would never work and would ruin our lives,” he wrote in his 2012 memoir. He added that the experience put 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 Tyler was aware of her age before inviting her back to his hotel, where he “performed various criminal sexual acts on her.” Holcomb had a second encounter with Tyler after an Aerosmith concert in Seattle, after which Tyler convinced Holcomb’s mother to make him her legal guardian.
Holcomb further alleges that Tyler repeatedly assaulted her and gave her alcohol and drugs, and once she became pregnant, threatened to stop supporting her if she didn’t have an abortion.
In her lawsuit, Holcomb also alleges Tyler subjected her to “involuntary shame” by discussing their relationship in his memoir, 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 child sexual abuse to make their allegations. The legal period ends on December 31, 2022.
Tyler has not yet responded to the lawsuit.