Mike Tyson is blamed of trying to grab his long-time photographer’s breast in the early 1980s, but instead of rejecting the charge, he claims the two had a consensual sexual connection beginning when he was ‘about 17’ and she was in her mid 20s.
Lori Grinker, 65, made the charge in the prologue to her new picture book, ‘Mike Tyson,’ a frank collection of photographs from Tyson’s adolescence through the early 1990s.
Mike could be really nice and loving when he was feeling it, and not so much when he wasn’t, she said of Tyson, who is now 56. He attempted to grasp her breast once, and when she pushed him away, he became enraged and tossed her light meter in the snow. He had a spoiled side and was used to having his way as the champion.
Tyson never tried anything like that again, according to Grinker, and the two resumed their working relationship. She also stated that Tyson was a “childish teen” at the time.
Tyson’s representatives issued the following statement- In this day and age, it’s upsetting that Ms. Grinker was not more cautious with her words, ignoring the truth that she was in a sexual relationship with Mike Tyson when he was a minor with almost a decade age difference.
Grinker informed that Tyson’s assertion was false.
According to Tyson’s spokeswoman, the purported romance started about 1983: He was approximately 17 at the time and had a sexual connection (sic) with her on and off until he was about 21. When he was champion in Atlantic City, he had sex with her as well.
Although Tyson’s publicist first referred to him as as a “minor” at the time of the alleged sexual encounter, she later clarified that minor is normally defined by law as an individual under the age of 18.
If Tyson had the alleged affair when he was 17, it would not have broken New York State consent statutes imposed in 1965.
The event does not represent their time together in the 1980s, which Grinker really loved.
They met when he was 13 years old and had just been released from a reformatory where he had been noticed as a promising boxing prodigy. Tyson had been adopted by trainer Cus D’Amato, who formerly guided Floyd Patterson to the heavyweight title in the 1960s, and was living with other prospective boxers at the boxing legend’s Catskill, New York house.
Grinker, a Parson School of Design student in New York in 1980, was on a photographic class project that led her to D’Amato’s Victorian home and gym in the Hudson Valley.
She met Tyson there for the first time, and spent the following decade photographing him for a number of magazines.
Grinker makes nothing of the accusation in her book, rather using the tale to highlight the different sides of Tyson, whom she also described as friendly and hilarious.
Grinker did not express an opinion on Tyson’s 1992 rape conviction.
She was really far off from that, she said while promoting her new book. She was going throughout the world, working on war stories and other projects.
She just didn’t know, she said further. She couldn’t tell if it was real or not. Nobody else does but just the two of them.
Tyson was sentenced to three years in jail in Indiana after being convicted of raping 18-year-old Desiree Washington in a hotel room in Indianapolis in 1991.
