Rock Star Filed ‘Gob-Smacking & Gaslighting Reply’ to Abuse Lawsuit
(Los Angeles, CA): In a new court filing seeking to deny Julia Misley her day in court, Tyler claims the teenager “consented” to his sexual crimes. It’s astonishing, galling and arrogant that an adult is trying to defend his crimes and exploitation of an unguarded 16-year-old for his perverse pleasure.
Gaslighting
Now, he’s heaping more pain on Misley and gaslighting her by falsely claiming that she “consented” and that the pain he inflicted was “justified and in good faith.” We’ve been helping survivors expose predators and fight for accountability and justice for more than 40 years. During that time, perpetrators, enablers, and their lawyers have tried almost every trick in the book to shame and blame the survivor for the abuse. 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. See the Answer of Tyler to Plaintiff’s First Amended Complaint.
Using a Sham Legal Guardianship to Avoid Prosecution for Sex Crimes
When Tyler assumed guardianship of our client, his duty of care was to ensure her safety, protection, and physical and emotional growth. Guardianship is a sacred legal agreement between the guardian, child, and the state. Not only did Tyler break the law when he sexually abused this teenager, forcing her to have an abortion and putting her life in danger, but he also broke the legal agreement with her parents and the state. It is a horrific double wound.
Tyler’s statement is more than a weak attempt to shift blame—it is a real and dangerous public safety threat to any vulnerable child who is currently in any kind of legal guardianship. Assuming care for a child—whether that child is 16 months or 16 years—does not and has never implied any type of consent to sexually abuse that child. To say any different is morally and legally repugnant.
40 Years of Trauma – Revisited
Tyler has spent the past 40 years continually hurting, shaming, profiting from, and retraumatizing this courageous survivor. He hid behind his lawyers, his celebrity status, and laws that protected him (until the law in California changed (AB 218)). Now he can’t hide any longer—it’s time for him and every predator in the music and entertainment industry to be held accountable to the law and to every vulnerable child who was exploited, abused, and raped. It’s time.
We hope Tyler’s mean-spirited gaslighting will backfire on him. We hope anyone else who used his fame, talent and money to exploit other girls will find the courage now to speak up and help stop this devastating and all-too-common type of abuse in the music industry. It’s time.
Jeff Anderson | Office: 310.357.2425 | Mobile: 612.817.8665