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 w as just an ‘immature teenager’ at the time.
Tyson’s representatives responded to DailyMail.com’suest 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 and a lie
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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.