George Foreman falters in bid to trim 1970s sexual abuse claims

LOS ANGELES (CN) — A federal judge on Thursday denied former heavyweight champion George Foreman’s efforts to duck a lawsuit by a woman who accuses him of sexually abusing her in the 1970s when she was a minor.

U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong, at a hearing Thursday in Los Angeles, tentatively denied Foreman’s motion for partial summary judgment that sought to exclude accusations based on purported sexual assault in Florida and Texas.

Whereas California, in the wake of the #metoo movement, allowed victims who suffered sexual abuse as minors to bring civil claims that had previously been barred by the statute of limitations, Texas hasn’t and, according to Foreman, Texas’s statute of limitations should be applied in the case.

The judge, however, wasn’t convinced that the Denise S.’s lawsuit, which was filed in California and references one purported occurrence of sexual abuse at a San Francisco hotel, should be parsed so that separate analyses are required as to which state’s interest are most at stake with respect to the separate factual claims.

Frimpong also observed that, should the case go to trial, it wouldn’t be an issue to instruct the jury only to award any damages for conduct that occurred in California.

“We do that all the time,” she told the attorneys for Foreman and Denise S.

The judge took Foreman’s motion under submission without issuing a final ruling at the hearing.

Denise S., the daughter of one Foreman’s trainers at the time, accuses the boxer-turned-entrepreneur of sexual abusing her when she about 15 or 16 years old. Foreman has adamantly denied her claims.

“In a blatant attempt to manufacture a claim under California Assembly Bill 218’s expanded statute of limitations, Denise falsely alleges in this action that Foreman sexually battered and inflicted extreme emotional distress on her back in the 1970s, when she was a teenager and Foreman was in his early 20s,” Foreman says in his counterclaim for defamation. “However, this never occurred.”

According to Foreman, now 75, Denise’s father Charlie was a boxer and trainer who worked with him back in the 1970s and during his comeback in the late 80s and 90s.

Charlie S. had problems with substance abuse, and Foreman said he financially supported him over the years. Charlie S., now deceased, never accused Foreman of any inappropriate behavior with his daughter, the former champion says.

In 2017, Denise S. contacted Foreman through a friend, saying that Denise was Charlie’s primary caregiver and requesting that Foreman provide Charlie with “big money” to help with his care, according to Foreman. It was only after he refused the demand for “big money,” which he believed Denise S. and her friend wanted for themselves, that she ever claimed he had sexually abused her, Foreman says.

She first sent him a a series of cryptic and threatening tweets where she appeared to claim for the first time that he had sexual relations with her when she was a minor, which Foreman says he simply ignored out of respect for her father.

He never heard from Denise until January 2022, when her attorney sent him a certified letter demanding over $12 million with the threat that they would file a public lawsuit regarding her claims, according to Foreman’s counterclaim.

He’s now suing Denise, as well as another woman, Gwen H., the daughter of a boxing promoter, who also accuses him of sexual abuse when she was a minor in the 1970s and who is represented by the same lawyer, on defamation claims stemming from a press conference in November 2022 where they and their attorney, Foreman claims, repeated and expanded on their “false and highly defamatory claims” against him.

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