Steven Tyler, the front man and lead singer for the rock group Aerosmith, is giving abused and neglected girls in Tennessee a place where they can be safe.
The singer attended a special "scarf-cutting" ceremony for the Memphis facility called Janie's House this week. (Tyler loves to tie scarves around his microphones.)
Named for the Aerosmith song "Janie's Got A Gun," about a young girl who uses drugs while living with an abusive father, Janie's House is a shelter and treatment facility for girls aged 12-18 dealing with much the same problems.
This is actually the second facility of the same name, as another opened near Atlanta, Georgia in 2017.
Tyler, 70, has been in an out of rehab through the decades, and says the people he met in treatment inspired him to help open the home.
"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," Tyler told reporters. "So when I got out of there, I laid it all on Janie. I said, what are you going to do?"
Years later, Tyler asked himself the same question: what are you going to do? His answer was the charity Janie's Fund, which he created in 2015 and has raised around $4 million since then.
The fund raises awareness for the abuse and neglect of girls while providing them with services to "overcome the trauma and pain of abuse," according to the charity's website.
Tyler reportedly donated $500,000 towards renovating the new Memphis location himself.
Janie's House is within another nonprofit called Youth Villages, a long term treatment facility which serves emotionally and behaviorally troubled children.
At a the ceremony opening the facility, Tyler said that supporting his signature charity "does my heart and soul good."
"This is real - to help even just one girl through Janie's House is a dream come true... just when the world feels over, you can turn into a butterfly."
Tyler's charity has raised eyebrows for some, as the singer infamously became the legal guardian to his 16-year-old girlfriend Julia Holcomb in 1975.
Tyler, who was 27 at the time, was still using drugs during the relationship. He entered rehab in 1986.
[H/T: NBC News]
