No doubt that times were different back in the day when Elvis Presley met Priscilla when she was 14; when Jerry Lee Lewis married his 13-year-old cousin; and when Drew Barrymore was engaged to Leland Hayward III when she was 16. Rock band Winger even had a top 40 hit in the ’80s with Seventeen, a song about having sex with a girl “Daddy says is too young, but she’s old enough for me.”

That’s not an excuse, however, for Steven Tyler, who — when he was 25 — dated a 16-year-old for months, took her on tour, plied her with alcohol and drugs, and allegedly forced her to get an abortion. That then-16-year-old, Julia Misley (formerly Julia Holcomb) sued the Aerosmith frontman in December 2022 for sexual assault and sexual battery, among other charges. Three months later, Tyler has proffered 24 defenses to deny the allegations.

Tyler does not deny the relationship. Both Misley and Tyler (in his memoir) have acknowledged the sexual relationship over the years (Tyler even wrote that he once nearly took her as his teen bride). However, Tyler’s defenses are as follows: The relationship was consensual; Misley did not suffer any damages because of it; if she did, it wasn’t his fault; and the most galling of them all: He had immunity because … he was her legal guardian at the time.

Indeed, Misley’s parents were so fond of Tyler that they literally signed over custody of her to Tyler so that he couldn’t get in trouble. “Her parents fell in love with me [and] signed a paper over for me to have custody so I wouldn’t get arrested if I took her out of state,” Tyler wrote in his memoir.

Misley’s attorney wrote in a statement, “Never have we encountered a legal defense as obnoxious and potentially dangerous as the one that Tyler and his lawyers launched this week: Their claim that legal guardianship is consent and permission for sexual abuse.”

Tyler is not the only rock star who has used this tactic. Ted Nugent, when he was 30, also became the legal guardian to a 17-year-old so that he couldn’t be charged with statutory rape.

via Page Six