
(Anatoliy Zhdanov/Kommersant Photo/Sipa USA) (Sipa via AP Images)
Elon Musk’s estranged father, Errol Musk, has been accused of sexually abusing some of his children and stepchildren in incidents spread over more than three decades, according to a bombshell New York Times report.
The sprawling investigation published Tuesday surfaces claims detailed in police records and family correspondence in the form of letters, emails, and pleas for help from relatives.
Allegations date back to 1993, when Errol Musk’s then 4-year-old stepdaughter told relatives he had touched her when the family lived in South Africa.
A decade later, after the family had moved to California, the same stepdaughter said she caught Errol Musk “sniffing her dirty underwear.” The incident was reported to police, and a complaint was filed with the city’s child protective services.
In 2009, the former stepdaughter, then 21 and living in South Africa, alleged in an interim protection order that Errol Musk kissed her and stuck his tongue into her mouth. In the same filing, The Times added, she accused him of abusing his two daughters and a stepson who had since died.
In his response to The Times, Errol Musk rejected the allegation, claiming instead that his former stepdaughter had “pounced on him in a spare bedroom” while he was asleep and that she “inappropriately kissed me.”
He dismissed the claims outright in comment to the newspaper, calling the allegation that he abused his stepson “nonsense” and the accusations involving his two daughters “absurd.”
The Times reported that throughout the 2010s family members raised concerns that alleged abuse had impacted two of Errol Musk’s daughters and a stepson.
The most recent alleged incident occurred in 2022, The Times reports, when family members and a social worker reportedly intervened after Errol Musk’s 5-year-old son claimed his father had “groped his buttocks.”
The newspaper said “three separate police investigations were opened, according to police and court records, as well as family members,” though Errol Musk was never convicted of a crime.
Relatives have reportedly appealed to Elon Musk for intervention on repeated occasions, including in a five-page letter around 2010 that was seen by The Times.
“We really need your advice, help and guidance in these matters because we daily see these children suffer,” family members pleaded to the tech mogul.
The Times reported it was uncertain whether Musk had personally read the letter, but noted that he had provided financial support to his stepsister.
In response to allegations reported by The Times, Errol Musk denied the claims as “nonsense.”
Elon Musk has not commented publicly on the latest reporting. In the past, however, he described his father to Rolling Stone as having done “almost every evil thing you could possibly think of.”
In Walter Isaacson’s 2023 authorized biography, Musk said he no longer communicates with him.