Presley said that she was molested by Priscilla’s then-boyfriend Michael Edwards.
Priscilla and Edwards dated for six years, and Lisa Marie described him as “an actor and a model, a dramatic guy with a horrible temper.”
Lisa Marie also said that Priscilla and Edwards got into physical fights “constantly.”
She alleged that Edwards first molested her in her room when she was 10 years old.
“I woke up to find him on his knees next to my bed, running his finger up my leg under the sheets, and if I moved, he stopped — so I moved,” Lisa Marie said.
She alleged that Edwards told her he was teaching her about what would happen when she got older. Lisa Marie said that she told her mom the next day, and Edwards apologized.
“Edwards was sitting on their bed looking very sullen and sulky,” Lisa Marie recalled. “He said, ‘I’m so sorry, but in Europe, that’s how they teach the kids, so that’s what I was doing.'”
Lisa Marie said that the sexual abuse continued.
“Eventually, it became that he would touch me and spank me, telling me not to look — ‘Don’t look at me,’ he’d say, ‘Don’t turn your head.’ I assume he was jerking off,” she wrote.
In the memoir, Riley said that what happened to her mom was “one of her deepest childhood traumas.”
Following the release of the book, Edwards denied Lisa Marie’s allegations.
“These claims are absolutely untrue,” Edwards, now 80, said in a statement to Us Weekly. “I never molested Lisa Marie and am shocked at the suggestion I did.”
Michael Edwards’ daughter, Caroline Van Zandt, also denied Lisa Marie’s claims.
“I have kept many notes and letters from Lisa Marie during those years and she never stated or insinuated that my dad touched her inappropriately,” she told Us Weekly. “When she told me about my dad walking into her room, we then addressed and resolved the issue as a family.”
“I’m disappointed and sad that these claims are being made,” Van Zandt added.
