Former American boxer, George Foreman, has vehemently denied a child sexual abuse allegation leveled against him by a woman.
The woman who is actually a member of his family is the third person to accuse the ex-boxer of sexual abuse.
The boxer and grill magnate, 74, is already the subject of two lawsuits by women in their 60s who claim he molested them when they were as young as 13. He vehemently denies the claims.
Now, an anonymous 64-year-old woman has filed a civil lawsuit claiming Foreman forced himself on her when she was 15 and he was over 24, around 1974 at his ranch in Livermore, California.
The latest complaint comes just days after new biopic, Big George Foreman, based on the retired heavyweight champ’s life and storied boxing career – including his infamous defeat against Muhammad Ali in the famous ‘Rumble in the Jungle’ match in 1974 – premiered in theaters.
But the lawsuits filed by the three women paint a different picture of the character of the man portrayed in the film.
The new complaint, filed in Alameda County, California, says the woman was born in 1958, is “a relative by marriage’ of Foreman, and was ‘born and raised in Houston, Texas”.
Although it names Foreman only as ‘Doe 1’, it clearly identifies him saying ‘Doe 1 defeated Joe Frazier in 1973 to become the heavyweight champion of the world.’
According to the legal complaint, a Foreman family member took the then-15-year-old from Houston to Livermore to help babysit the boxer’s child around 1974. It said Foreman paid for ‘all expenses’ including the flight.
The teen was “excited about the opportunity to visit California and to meet her world famous relative,” it said.
But when she was left unattended with Foreman during the visit, he “began to ask Plaintiff se*ually explicit, questions which Plaintiff replied that she had absolutely no experience of,” the papers said.
The girl says she refused the famous boxer who “began to proposition her with money in exchange for him sexually penetrating her” and “stated that while penetrating her he wanted to climax inside of her”. She claims he then rpd her.
“After Plaintiff refused DOE 1’s sexual advances, DOE 1 imposed his will upon the unsuspecting minor, and began engaging in immoral and unwanted sexual acts against her, which included oral copulation,” the complaint says.
“After DOE 1 completed the sexual assault, Plaintiff was left in terror, and could not comprehend what had just happened to her. Because the incident involved a family member, Plaintiff had not [sic] one to turn to, and was in complete fear of what would happen to her if she said anything.
“On that basis, in order to cope with the fear and pain, Plaintiff blocked the memory from mind as her only coping mechanism as to the sexual assault.”
The woman claims that it wasn’t until the last three years when sexual assault came up in a conversation with her friend ‘Patricia’, that the memories came flooding back.
“Plaintiff began to develop frightful thoughts about DOE 1, as she suddenly began to have flash backs of the sexual assault that occurred in 1974,” the lawsuit said.
The complaint was filed on December 30 by attorney James Bryant II of the Cochran Firm, a Los Angeles practice.
The woman is the third to come forward alleging Foreman abused her as a child.
Two women, Gwen Hunter and Denise Shipes say they were the daughters of Foreman’s sparring partner and boxing manager respectively, and first met him when they were under 10, according to their Los Angeles County Superior Court lawsuits.
They claim he groomed them for years, then forced them to have sex with him in a San Francisco Hotel, a Beverly Hills apartment, and other locations.
Shipes’s lawsuit, filed on September 9 last year, claims Foreman called her at home in Hayward, California, when she was 13 and told her how to masturbate, then had sex with her “several times” when she was 15.
Hunter, who filed first on August 24, claims Foreman threatened her saying “you don’t want your dad to lose his job, do you?” and then “orally copulated her”. She claims he would ‘molest and seually abuse [Denise] until she was 16″, including ‘seual intercourse’.
Foreman sought to get ahead of the filings, issuing a statement last year accusing them of extortion.
“Over the past six months, two women have been trying to extort millions of dollars each from me and my family. They are falsely claiming that I sexually abused them over 45 years ago in the 1970s. I adamantly and categorically deny these allegations,” he said.
“I will work with my lawyers to fully and truthfully expose my accusers’ scheme and defend myself in court. I don’t pick fights, but I don’t run away from them either.”
He is currently counter-suing one of the women in federal court – claiming that at a press conference she made allegations that went beyond her lawsuit, leaving her open to a defamation claim.
His complaint claims their allegations are “entirely fabricated” with “zero corroborating evidence in the form of documents, photographs, letters, or witnesses to support … false claims against Foreman.”
