Mike Tyson: I was molested as a child by an old man.

Mike Tyson

Mike Tyson Was Molested As A Child By An Old Man

Boxing legend Mike Tyson is opening up about the horrific sexual assault that he experienced as a child. The 51-year-old retired boxer, who has eight children, has spoken candidly about his life in his documentary, “Tyson.” Fast forward to the present day and Tyson recalls being seven years old when he was molested. He says that he was walking down a Brooklyn street when an,

old man… snatched me off the street.

He was ‘bullied’ and ‘sexually abused’ before he eventually managed to run away. Tyson never saw his abuser again and never told anyone, including the police, about the abuse for decades for fear he would be judged. He’s now reluctant to go into too much detail, saying he would ‘like to keep that where it was in the past’, but admitting,

I was molested as a child.

When asked why he so rarely mentioned the incident, he replied:

It was no one’s business to know, people just don’t talk about it because to some people they believe it’s demasculating them. I learned that it doesn’t make you any less of a man because it happened. 

Tyson first publicly revealed he was sexually abused in an interview on SiriusXM’s Opie Radio show in 2014. At the time, he says:

I was a little kid…[he was an] old man. [He] bullied me, sexually abused me and stuff. Never seen him again.

When asked by the interviewer whether the event changed him, Tyson answered:

I don’t know if it did or not. I don’t always remember, but maybe I do but I don’t. I’m not ashamed or embarrassed by it.

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