California Judge Rules Steven Tyler's Child Sexual Abuse Trial Can Go Forward

Steven Tyler's attorneys can claim partial victory in a new court ruling as arguments continue in a child sex-abuse lawsuit brought by the former Julia Holcomb.

Los Angeles County Judge Patricia A. Young has dismissed claims of alleged abuse in Oregon, Washington and Massachusetts, citing laws governing the age of consent and the statute of limitations. Crucially, however, the California-based charges against Aerosmith's frontman can go forward.

In terminating the other claims, Judge Young would apparently stop them from being refiled again. She promised a written decision soon. "I have clearly signaled how I intend" to rule, Young said from the bench. "I'm not moving the trial."

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Holcomb, who now goes by Julia Misley after marrying, says the then-25-year-old Tyler began abusing her while on tour in the early '70s when she was a high school sophomore. They first met backstage in Portland, Misley said in the lawsuit. She said they had sex the next night in Seattle. In both cases, the age of consent at the time was 18.

"I was treated like a sex toy," Misley said during depositions. "I was treated like a pet, like a thing, and it was humiliating."

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A subsequent encounter in California was recounted in Tyler's autobiography, 2011's Does the Noise in My Head Bother You?, though he did not name Misley. Tyler eventually became her legal guardian during a three-year relationship in which Misley says she was groomed.

"I went and slept at her parents' house for a couple of nights," Tyler wrote in his memoir, "and her parents fell in love with me, signed papers over for me to have custody, so I wouldn't get arrested if I took her out of state." Misley, meanwhile, said she'd become "lost in a rock and roll culture" as an impressionable teen.

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Tyler's lawyers denied the abuse claims and asked that her December 2022 lawsuit be dismissed on the grounds that she moved in with him in Boston, where the age of consent was 16. The judge, however, ruled that local laws governed his actions when they traveled together outside of Massachusetts.

Misley brought this action after California passed 2019's Child Victim's Act, which gave survivors a three-year window to make older claims. Young said her assertion that Tyler sexually abused her at a Beverly Hills hotel while on tour was valid enough to proceed.

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"Even if it's legal in Massachusetts, California has an interest in saying, 'Okay, that's fine but it's illegal here. Don't come within our borders and do it here," Judge Young argued in court. "California absolutely has an interest in people coming into our state, committing a crime here, such as childhood sexual abuse, and then leaving again."

A second woman later filed suit against Tyler again alleging sexual assault as a teen, but those claims have since been dismissed.