Two women have filed lawsuits in a Los Angeles court alleging that former heavyweight boxing champion George Foreman sexually assaulted them in the 1970s.
Since the claims were first made public last month, George Foreman, 73, has rejected them, and his representatives have pointed inquiries regarding the cases to one of his prior statements.
On Wednesday, the women filed separate lawsuits in Los Angeles County Superior Court using the aliases Gwen H. and Denise F.
The claims refer to Foreman as DOE 1, but they also identify him as the professional boxer who defeated Joe Frazier in 1973 to win the heavyweight world championship before losing it to Muhammad Ali in 1974.
Both women, who are now in their early 60s, claimed that the reason they first encountered Foreman as kids was because their fathers were Foreman’s boxing partners.
In her case, Denise, a resident of Los Angeles, claimed that George Foreman groomed her when she was 8 years old and engaged in sexual activity with her when she was 15 (under the legal age of consent), once in a hotel room in San Francisco.
Gwen, a native of Nevada, said that she first encountered George Foreman when she was 9 years old and that he sexually assaulted and raped her between the ages of 15 and 16, including at a Beverly Hills apartment. She claimed that Foreman warned her that failure to cooperate would result in her father’s termination as a boxing consultant.
Foreman referred to the accusations as unfounded and false.
The lawsuits were brought about by a California law that extended the statute of limitations that previously barred some victims of child sex abuse from bringing civil lawsuits, and that took effect in 2020.
Both ladies are asking for a jury trial and an undetermined sum of money in damages.