EXCLUSIVE: Photographer claims young Mike Tyson ‘tried to grab my breast’ during a shoot in the early 1980s… but he insists the pair was in a sexual relationship when he was 17 and she was in her mid-twenties
- Tyson is accused of attempting to grab the breast of his long-time photographer
- Lori Grinker described the incident in her new pictorial book on the heavyweight
- Grinker: ‘He tried to grab my breast… when I pushed him away, he got angry’
- Tyson’s reps did not deny that claim when contacted by DailyMail.com
- They accused her of having sex with Tyson when he was ‘around 17’
- Grinker, now 65, called the 56-year-old Tyson’s claim ‘inaccurate’
- Click here for all your latest international Sports news from DailyMail.com
Mike Tyson is accused of attempting to grab the breast of his long-time photographer in the early 1980s, but rather than denying the claim, he’s alleging the two had a consensual sexual relationship starting when he was ‘around 17’ and she was in her mid 20s.
Award-winning photographer Lori Grinker, 65, made her accusation in the preface of her new pictorial book, ‘Mike Tyson,’ a candid collection of photographs from Tyson’s teenage years in through the early 1990s.
‘Mike could be very sweet and gentle when he was feeling it, and not very sweet or gentle when he wasn’t,’ she wrote about Tyson, who is now 56. ‘He once tried to grab my breast, and when I pushed him away, he got angry and threw my light meter in the snow. He had a somewhat spoiled side and, being the champ, grew accustomed to getting his way.’
In emails to DailyMail.com, Grinker said Tyson never tried anything like that again and the two continued with their professional relationship. She also stressed that Tyson was just an ‘immature teenager’ at the time.
Tyson’s representatives responded to DailyMail.com’s request for comment with a statement: ‘In this day and age it’s unfortunate that Ms. Grinker was not more careful with her words omitting the fact that she was in a sexual relationship with Mike Tyson when he was a minor with almost a decade age difference.’
Grinker has told DailyMail.com that Tyson’s claim is inaccurate.
Mike Tyson is accused of attempting to grab the breast of his long-time photographer in the early 1980s, but rather than denying the claim, has accused the woman of having a sexual relationship with him when he was a minor. Award-winning photographer Lori Grinker, 65, made the accusation in the preface of her new pictorial book, ‘Mike Tyson,’ a candid collection of photographs from Tyson’s teenage years in through the early 1990s
Tyson’s representatives responded to DailyMail.com’s request for comment with a statement: ‘In this day and age it’s unfortunate that Ms. Grinker was not more careful with her words omitting the fact that she was in a sexual relationship with Mike Tyson when he was a minor with almost a decade age difference.’ Grinker (right) called Tysons’ counterclaim ‘inaccurate’
Grinker made the claim in her new book, titled ‘Mike Tyson,’ which offers a rare glimpse into his rise from a nervous, shy teenager to the heavyweight champion of the world
CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS
Grinker’s initial claim: In her new pictorial book, ‘Mike Tyson,’ award-winning photographer Lori Grinker, 65, says the now-56-year-old boxing legend attempted to grab her breast as the two worked together in the early 1980s.
‘He once tried to grab my breast, and when I pushed him away, he got angry and threw my light meter in the snow,’ Grinker wrote.
Response from Tyson reps: When asked for a response to her claims by DailyMail.com, a Tyson spokesperson accused Grinker of having a sexual relationship with Grinker when he was a minor and she was an adult.
‘In this day and age it’s unfortunate that Ms. Grinker was not more careful with her words omitting the fact that she was in a sexual relationship with Mike Tyson when he was a minor with almost a decade age difference,’ read the statement.
The Tyson spokesperson later added: ‘He was around 17 and had sexual relationship (sic) with her on & off until about 21. He had sex with her also when he was champion in Atlantic City.’
Grinker responds to Tyson: In an email to DailyMail.com, Grinker described Tyson’s claim of a sexual relationship as ‘inaccurate’ before going on to make an additional statement.
‘It’s not surprising, though regrettable, that in the guise of what the Daily Mail writer terms is ”integrity” he chose to focus out of context on a brief moment I used to mark a time in Mike’s life as an immature teenager as I documented Mike’s hard-fought, meteoric rise to a settled, thoughtful world champion,’ Grinker wrote. ‘Working a path of salaciousness and merely to gin up controversy, the writer has purportedly prompted a Tyson spokesman to reply inaccurately and with a lie that is, in fact, libelous. My homage to Mike Tyson speaks for itself.’
In a separate email to DailyMail.com, Tyson’s spokesperson indicated that the alleged relationship began around 1983: ‘He was around 17 and had sexual relationship (sic) with her on & off until about 21. He had sex with her also when he was champion in Atlantic City.’
Although Tyson’s spokeswoman initially described him as a ‘minor’ at the time the alleged sexual relationship supposedly began, she later explained that ‘minor is generally legally defined as a person under the age of 18.’
If the alleged affair did occur when Tyson was 17, it would not have violated New York State consent laws enacted in 1965.
The incident hardly typifies their time together in the 1980s, much of which Grinker enjoyed.
The two met when he was a 13-year-old, recently released from a reformatory, where he was discovered as a budding boxing prodigy. Tyson had been adopted by trainer Cus D’Amato, who once guided Floyd Patterson to the heavyweight title in the 1960s, and was living in the boxing legend’s Catskill, New York home with other aspiring fighters.
Grinker, a college student at the Parson School of Design in New York in 1980, was on a photography class assignment, which brought her to D’Amato’s Victorian home and gym in the Hudson Valley.
Grinker’s new pictorial book, Mike Tyson, chronicles his life from 1980 through 1990
Mike Tyson, pictured in 1984, when he was just 18 and on his way to becoming history’s youngest heavyweight champion ever . It was during this time that Grinker worked with Tyson
View of American model Beverly Johnson and heavyweight boxer Mike Tyson as the attend a performance in Harlem’s Apollo Theater
It was there that she first encountered Tyson, before spending much of the next decade shooting him for a variety of publications.
Grinker does not make much of the claim in her book, instead including the anecdote as a way to show the many sides of Tyson, whom she also referred to as polite and funny.
As for Tyson’s 1992 rape conviction, Grinker did not offer an opinion on his guilt.
‘I was pretty far removed from it,’ she told DailyMail.com while promoting her new book. ‘I was traveling around the world and working on war-related stories and other things.
‘I just didn’t know,’ she continued. ‘I didn’t know if it was true or not. Nobody does but the two of them.’
Tyson served three years in an Indiana prison after being convicted of raping 18-year-old Desiree Washington in an Indianapolis hotel room in 1991.
Convicted rapist Mike Tyson walks into the Marion County Courthouse in handcuffs 13 June 1994 before his sentence reduction hearing in Indianapolis, IN. Testimony is being heard on whether the former champion boxer’s behavior in prison should warrant an early release
Source: Read Full Article
