Steven Tyler is under fire for allegations of sexual assault with a claim stemming back from the 70’s, more than 50 years ago. In December 2022, a woman named Julia Holcomb filed papers at a Los Angeles court, accusing the Aerosmith frontman of “sexual assault, sexual battery, and intentional infliction of emotional distress.”
She sued him due to California temporarily lifting its statute of limitations for sexual abuse of minors. Tyler is now 75, but Holcomb is claiming this all started when the rocker was 25, shortly after his now-legendary rock band Aerosmith had just released their debut album, which included the iconic songs “Dream On,” “Somebody,” and six more songs that have all become well-known hits.
Following the album’s release in January 1973, the band went on tour and during that tour, in November of that year, he met a newly 16-year-old Julia Holcomb. According to Holcomb’s lawsuit, the first night they met, she disclosed her age in his hotel room and he allegedly “performed various acts of criminal sexual conduct upon her.”
Her suit also claims that he convinced her mom to sign off on him being her legal guardian so he could cross state lines with a minor and not get in trouble with the law.
In his 2012 memoir Does the Noise in My Head Bother You?: A Rock ‘n’ Roll Memoir, he wrote about meeting a 16-year-old when he was in his mid-twenties, and described their many intimate interactions. He referred to her as a “teen bride” at one point. He never named the woman in his book.
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In her suit, Holcomb claims that Tyler forced her to get an abortion when she was five months pregnant at 17 years old. She also noted that the apartment he had her living in caught on fire and she nearly died from smoke inhalation. According to Newsweek, Tyler wrote about the abortion and the apartment fire in his book.
She first made these allegations back in 2011 in an article she wrote for Lifesite News, where she said she was his live-in girlfriend for three years.
Four months after the lawsuit was filed, Steven Tyler is now responding, denying the claims of sexual assault. His filing claims that all their interactions were consensual and that he was “immunized from her claims since he had been granted legal custody over her.”