This is one of the most heartbreaking stories I’ve ever read. In 2009, The Blind Side was released to some acclaim, and Sandra Bullock eventually won the Best Actress Oscar for her performance. The film purported to tell the “true story” of Michael Oher, a boy from a tough, poverty-stricken background and how he was “saved” by a wealthy white family, Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy. The Blind Side’s version of events were nowhere near the reality, although everyone involved believed that the bare bones story was correct: that the Tuohys formed a relationship with a teenage boy and they adopted him and shepherded him into a brilliant college football career and eventual NFL career. Turns out, the Tuohys didn’t adopt him. Instead, they formed some kind of conservatorship in which they bilked Oher out of his life rights and millions of dollars. Now Oher is suing the Tuohys because he only recently learned that they never adopted him and that this huge fraud was perpetrated against him. You can read the full depressing ESPN story here. Here are some of the basics:
Retired NFL star Michael Oher, whose supposed adoption out of grinding poverty by a wealthy, white family was immortalized in the 2009 movie “The Blind Side,” petitioned a Tennessee court Monday with allegations that a central element of the story was a lie concocted by the family to enrich itself at his expense. The 14-page petition, filed in Shelby County, Tennessee, probate court, alleges that Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy, who took Oher into their home as a high school student, never adopted him. Instead, less than three months after Oher turned 18 in 2004, the petition says, the couple tricked him into signing a document making them his conservators, which gave them legal authority to make business deals in his name.
The petition further alleges that the Tuohys used their power as conservators to strike a deal that paid them and their two birth children millions of dollars in royalties from an Oscar-winning film that earned more than $300 million, while Oher got nothing for a story “that would not have existed without him.” In the years since, the Tuohys have continued calling the 37-year-old Oher their adopted son and have used that assertion to promote their foundation as well as Leigh Anne Tuohy’s work as an author and motivational speaker.
“The lie of Michael’s adoption is one upon which Co-Conservators Leigh Anne Tuohy and Sean Tuohy have enriched themselves at the expense of their Ward, the undersigned Michael Oher,” the legal filing says. “Michael Oher discovered this lie to his chagrin and embarrassment in February of 2023, when he learned that the Conservatorship to which he consented on the basis that doing so would make him a member of the Tuohy family, in fact provided him no familial relationship with the Tuohys.”
Oher’s petition asks the court to end the Tuohys’ conservatorship and to issue an injunction barring them from using his name and likeness. It also seeks a full accounting of the money the Tuohys earned using Oher’s name, and to have the couple pay him his fair share of profits, as well as unspecified compensatory and punitive damages.
“Since at least August of 2004, Conservators have allowed Michael, specifically, and the public, generally, to believe that Conservators adopted Michael and have used that untruth to gain financial advantages for themselves and the foundations which they own or which they exercise control,” the petition says. “All monies made in said manner should in all conscience and equity be disgorged and paid over to the said ward, Michael Oher.”
[From ESPN]
ESPN goes on to correct the record about Oher’s childhood, which was not what was portrayed in The Blind Side. Oher was already a smart, high-achieving kid who had come to the attention of a private school in Memphis, where he got a scholarship as a foster kid. He began spending nights at his school friends’ homes, which is how he came to know the Tuohys. He was not illiterate or intellectually challenged whatsoever. At the time, he thought he was being welcomed into their family and he didn’t realize until THIS YEAR that at no point did they ever legally adopt him. They also screwed him out of his life rights – he was paid nothing for The Blind Side, while the Tuohys raked in millions.
Oher waited until his NFL career was over in 2016 to investigate what the f–k was happening with the money and with the Tuohys. He hired a lawyer who eventually helped him uncover all of this. In February, they discovered the conservatorship and the fact that Oher was never adopted. His lawyer tells ESPN: “Mike didn’t grow up with a stable family life. When the Tuohy family told Mike they loved him and wanted to adopt him, it filled a void that had been with him his entire life. Discovering that he wasn’t actually adopted devastated Mike and wounded him deeply.” The Tuohys are going to HELL.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.
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