We all know him as the big-mouthed, flamboyant, and talented frontman of the rock band, Aerosmith. But Steven Tyler is more than that. He’s also a rocker with a good soul and heart.

On February 4, 2019, Steven Tyler opened the second Janie’s House in the Youth Villages in Barlett, Tennessee, just outside of Memphis. Janie’s House is a home for abused and neglected girls.

Janie’s House was funded through a donation of US$500,000 from Janie’s Fund, a non-profit organization Steven Tyler created in partnership with Youth Villages. Youth Villages provides support for families with emotional, mental and behavioral problems and is the perfect partner for Janie’s Fund.

“This does my heart and my soul good. This is real,” Steven Tyler said at the “scarf-cutting” dedication ceremony.

Janie’s House is named after the famous Aerosmith song, “Janie’s Got A Gun,” about a girl who seeks revenge on her abusive father.

Steven Tyler wrote the song about child abuse at first but when he conducted research about the topic, he learned about handgun deaths in the US.

“I looked over at a Time magazine and saw this article on 48 hours, minute by minute, of handgun deaths in the United States,” Steven continued. “Then I got off on the child-abuse angle. I’d heard this woman speaking about how many children are attacked by their mothers and fathers. It was… scary. I felt, man, I gotta sing about this. And that was it. That was my toe in the door.”

And now, the song has done more than just sing about family and child abuse. It has become a venue to literally help these children who have experienced this abuse for real.

Tyler decided to open Janie’s House when he met other young women who have been victims of abuse at a treatment center.

“While I was there, all the girls I met had been abused either physically, mentally or verbally, or at least 90 percent of them all,” Steven said. “So when I got out of there, I laid it all on Janie. I said, what are you going to do?”

Since the song was released, Steven has always thought of what he can do to prevent the abuse that Janie experienced. What kind of help could Janie have received that would have prevented her trauma? How often does sexual abuse like this happen in our country? What can we do about it?

Janie’s Fund hopes to give a voice to the thousands of victims who haven’t had one.

The first Janie’s House opened in 2017 in Douglasville, Georgia, about 20 miles west of Atlanta. Some of the girls who live there were at the dedication ceremony.

“The reason that I am at Janie’s House is because I experienced sexual abuse at the age of 3,” JaBrayia, one of the girls said, who’s now 14. “Through Janie’s House, I can learn a lot about my past and learn I was not the only one that had been through the same problems.”

Janie’s House will be home to two batches of about 14 girls at a time.

In a year, there will be around 26 to 30 abused girls who will live there and will be provided with support and therapy.

Watch Steven Tyler talk about how important Janie’s House has become for abused women in the video below.

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Source: WJHL