Lita Ford defends Tony Iommi abuse allegations

Former Runaways star Lita Ford refuses to pay attention to negative comments about her allegedly abusive relationship with former fiance Tony Iommi.
The female rocker opens up about her tumultuous romance with the Black Sabbath guitarist in her new memoir, Living Like A Runaway, in which she accuses Iommi of attacking her on at least two occasions as he battled severe drug addiction.
“After snorting tons of blow, he got angry and choked me unconscious,” she wrote in an excerpt obtained by the New York Post last month (Feb16). “When I woke up, I saw him holding a chair above my head. It was a big, heavy leather chair with studs around the arms, and he was about to smash it over my face. I rolled over, and luckily I moved fast enough that he missed me and the chair smashed into the ground.”
Her recollection of the relationship prompted some critics to blast her online and speak out in Iommi’s defence, but Ford has no regrets about going public with the controversial claims, insisting her detractors know nothing about being on the receiving end of domestic abuse.
“First of all, I don’t read that c**p, because it is c**p and they don’t know the true story unless they’ve read the book or have been there themselves…,” she told music writer Joel Gausten.
“I had been beaten up severely; the guy almost killed me. A lot of it maybe could have been his drug problem… There are different kinds of abuse, and people need to realise that… Tony was physically abusive. He was not verbally abusive (or) sexually abusive; he was just physically abusive. I’m not making it up; I couldn’t possibly make up a story like that. I’m not that good of a liar…”
Ford goes on to admit it took her some time to build up the courage to leave Iommi, because she had no idea how to handle such a difficult situation.
“I was in love with Tony,” she continued. “He was my everything; he was my world, my idol, my lover. I was going to marry him; I was engaged. I didn’t know anything about an abusive relationship. I had never been in one before… I actually lied to my mother and I said, ‘Mum, I’ve got a girlfriend whose boyfriend hit her’. And she said, ‘Lita, he do it once, he do it again’. I just went, ‘Oh my God’. He had done it more than once, and I knew that it was only a matter of time… I needed to get out of there. Thank God we weren’t married and we had no kids, so I packed up and left.”
Iommi has yet to comment on Ford’s allegations.
She also detailed her drug-fuelled encounters with Jon Bon Jovi, Richie Sambora, Eddie Van Halen, and Dee Dee Ramone in the autobiography.