Steven Tyler Accuser Says Age-of-Consent Argument Won’t Save Him From Child Sexual Assault Trial

A woman suing Aerosmith singer Steven Tyler over accusations that she was almost his “child bride” in the 1970s is urging a judge to deny the star’s efforts to dismiss her sexual assault lawsuit.

In court papers filed Wednesday in Los Angeles court, attorneys for Julia Misley argue that Tyler — whom they claim “groomed” and “manipulated” her as a teenager — cannot rely on the laws of Massachusetts to escape a case she filed in California.

“Defendant, as plaintiff’s guardian, used his wealth and celebrity status to sexually assault plaintiff as a child for multiple years in multiple states, including California,” Misley’s lawyers said. “Thus, it was defendant who chose California law to apply, not plaintiff.”

Misley (formerly Holcomb) sued Tyler in 2022, claiming she was the unnamed person he referred to in his memoir as a “teen bride” he almost married. They claim he abused his fame to win control over her — including signing an agreement with her parents to take legal guardianship — and sexually assault her for three years starting in 1973, when she was just 16 years old.

With a trial looming in October, Tyler has argued that the case must be dismissed. His lawyers say the pair lived together in Boston, where the legal age of consent is 16; he also says the statute of limitations in Massachusetts has long since expired.

But in this week’s response, Misley’s lawyers say that argument is clearly procedurally flawed — and that he cannot hide behind laws in other states when he lives in California and some of the alleged misconduct took place in that jurisdiction.

“Now, as a California resident, defendant believes that he should not be liable despite never raising the defenses he relies upon,” her lawyers write in Wednesday’s filing. “This failure is fatal to his attempts to escape liability [and] plaintiff respectfully requests the court deny defendant’s motion in its entirety and allow this case to be decided by a jury.”

In a statement to Billboard on Friday, Tyler’s attorney David Long-Daniels rejected the arguments raised by Misley’s lawyers, saying the defenses had, in fact, been properly raised in earlier court filings: “We have a very strong belief in the merits of our defense.”

Misley’s allegations against Tyler were not new. She made similar accusations in a 2011 article published by the anti-abortion website LifesiteNews, and she made the same claims in 2020 during an appearance on Fox News.

But in 2022, she took her allegations to court — accusing Tyler of using his “power as a well-known musician and rock star” in order to “gain access to, groom, manipulate, exploit” her.

The lawsuit repeatedly cited Tyler’s own memoir (Does the Noise in My Head Bother You?), in which he explicitly referenced a relationship with an underage girl. “She was 16, she knew how to nasty, and there wasn’t a hair on it,” Tyler wrote in the book passage that’s quoted in the lawsuit. “I was so in love I almost took a teen bride.”

The lawsuit alleged that Tyler convinced Misley’s parents to grant him guardianship over her — an accusation that also came with quotes from his memoir: “I went and slept at her parents’ house for a couple of nights and her parents fell in love with me, signed paper over for me to have custody, so I wouldn’t get arrested if I took her out of state.”

In Tyler’s motion to dismiss the case, filed in June, he didn’t deny the basic facts. But his lawyers characterized the pairing as a consensual “romantic relationship” between a man “in his mid-twenties at the time” and a woman “between the ages of 16 and 19.”

“Plaintiff and Tyler lived together in Boston, Massachusetts, where the legal age of consent was (and remains) 16. Plaintiff has never lived in California,” Tyler’s lawyers wrote. “However, five decades after the fact, plaintiff sued in California claiming that her relationship with Tyler, part of which occurred prior to her turning 18, constitutes ‘childhood sexual assault.’”

“Under Massachusetts law at the time, the age of consent was 16, and as such, plaintiff and Tyler’s relationship was legal,” they wrote.

If Tyler’s motion is denied, the case is currently scheduled to go to trial on Oct. 1. His attorney, Long-Daniels, said his team was ready: “This case was filed over a half century after the events,” he said. “The defenses are very strong. We feel prepared for trial and think we’ll prevail, God willing.”