It is reported that 74-year-old Steven Tyler is being sued for sexual assault for allegedly raping a minor almost half a century ago.
Publications, including Rolling Stone, recently reported a complaint against Steven Tyler, which was filed in Los Angeles by a certain Julia Holcomb. Although Tyler is not directly named as a defendant—according to the aforementioned report, a case is currently being filed against “Defendant Doe 1 and Doe 2 — 50″—Holcomb has long spoken about the alleged abuses that the Aerosmith frontman is said to have had. inflicted on her.
“I met Steven when I was 16 at a concert,” Holcomb said in an interview when Steven Tyler was about 26 years old at the time of the first meeting. “We started a relationship that lasted about three years. I was a minor, and he became my legal guardian.
“I lived with him in Boston and went on tour with him. At first I didn’t think it would be a long-term relationship. I just knew I cared about him a lot. I thought he was the best thing that ever happened to me. I worshipped him,” Holcomb continued.
As expected, given the current lawsuit and Holcomb’s aforementioned public comments, the union eventually broke up, but not before Tyler allegedly asked his decidedly young high school dropout partner to marry him.
“After we were together for a few months,” Holcomb said, “he asked me if I was ready to have a family, a child. I was taking birth control pills at the time, but he said he wanted a family and asked if I wanted a baby. …I told him that I absolutely want a baby.
“We were at the hotel and he threw my birth control pills off the balcony. And about a year later I got pregnant. I remember going to him and saying I was very excited. I wanted my baby so much, and I thought–I couldn’t wait to tell him. And he seemed happy, too, when I first told him I was pregnant. And a few months later he asked me to marry him.”
However, Tyler’s parents “expressed concern” about these plans and “did not provide as much support as I had hoped,” which, according to Holcomb’s account of the “train wreck,” led to the deterioration of the reckless relationship.
“It seemed like he [Tyler] had changed his mind. He didn’t want to get married anymore, and I was very angry, and I didn’t hesitate to tell him that I felt that he really betrayed my trust. We went back to Boston, where we had an apartment, and we were kind of in limbo. I really didn’t know how it would all work. I just thought: “I’m going to have a baby and we’re just going to live together.”
“He went on tour and decided to leave me there, in the apartment, because I was about five months pregnant. I’m not sure exactly how far I’ve come because I haven’t been to the doctor. …I had no education, I dropped out of school, I didn’t have a driver’s license, I couldn’t go anywhere, I didn’t have my own money, and I didn’t have prenatal care.”
It is said that Tyler called to check in in the evenings, but “after about two weeks the food in the apartment ran out,” after which the vocalist allegedly hired one of the first members of Aerosmith (and a childhood friend) Ray Tabano to take her shopping.
“I was so excited because I had been locked in this apartment for two weeks and I was going to get out of the house. I sat by the window and waited for Ray to come. He arrived, I let him in, and I don’t remember what happened after that. But I woke up on fire.
“Ray was not there, and the apartment was on fire — there was smoke everywhere. I saw nothing but smoke. I knew I had to get out of there quickly because I couldn’t breathe. …I went to the front door, and it was locked. There were three locks on this door; all three were locked. And the lock in the bolt jammed.
According to Holcomb, due to the fact that the flames and smoke made other exits inaccessible, she “crawled into the fireplace”, where she was found by the arriving firefighters.
“When I woke up in the hospital, I inhaled smoke, and the doctors thought I wouldn’t survive because they checked my oxygen level, and it was very low. They said that if I survived, I would have brain damage. But I was fine; I woke up, I was able to answer their questions.
“And I was in the hospital for a few days, and Stephen came up to me and said I needed to have an abortion. That’s where I was when he introduced the idea of my abortion. … He told me that I need to have an abortion right now, otherwise the doctors won’t do it because I’m so far away. He wanted me to have an abortion before I was discharged from the hospital.
“I just kept saying no until he put a decision between him and the baby—that I would have to go home if I decided to keep my baby. I just couldn’t imagine my life without him [Tyler],” Holcomb continued.
Holcomb also described the abortion in detail, stating that Tyler was “snorting cocaine” next to her while it was taking place. Although there are two sides to every story, it goes without saying that the catastrophe described above (and the alleged violence in it) remains in Holcomb’s memory five decades later.
The alleged victim’s complaint specifically accuses Tyler of sexual assault, sexual beatings and intentional infliction of emotional stress, according to Rolling Stone magazine, and claims that his memoir describes their time together as a “romantic love relationship” and not a cruel ordeal.
Meanwhile, Holcomb claims she was subjected to “involuntary shame” with the publication of Tyler’s memoir, which contains a confession (among many others) “Julia Holcomb.”
“But towards the end everything went downhill. We got so tangled up in drugs and so out of control that the dark side began to take over,” Tyler wrote in his autobiography, readily admitting that the alleged victim’s parents (rather casually) “signed documents for my custody, so I wouldn’t have been arrested if I had taken her out of state”.
“And while I was on the road, our apartment almost burned down, and she ended up in the hospital with carbon monoxide poisoning,” says Tyler’s version of events, published after the topic was described in a completely different way in Aerosmith’s autobiography. “I went to see her in the hospital, and that’s when reality hit me in the face. When you love someone, set them free. And all I had to do was let her go. She went back to her parents, but I still see her in the songs we sang together.”
