Elon Musk’s estranged father, Errol Musk, is facing several allegations of child sex abuse involving five of his children and stepchildren, according to a new New York Times investigation.
The allegations against Errol, 79, were detailed in police reports, court records, personal letters, and interviews with family members and social workers. The alleged incidents occurred in South Africa, where Errol lives, and California.
Errol — who has not been charged with, or convicted of, any crimes — denied the allegations against him. He told the Times that “the reports are false and nonsense to the extreme.” He suggested the family members were “putting the children up to say false things” to get money from Elon.
Several allegations in the story center around a former stepdaughter from Errol’s marriage to Heidi-Mari Bezuidenhout, his third wife. The earliest alleged incident occurred in 1993 when the stepdaughter (from Bezuidenhout’s first marriage) was four years old. Errol allegedly placed her on a row of trash cans at the family’s home in Pretoria, South Africa, and touched her.
The stepdaughter told her aunt about the alleged incident, and the aunt and other relatives reported it to the authorities. An investigation was opened, but the charges were withdrawn as part of a divorce settlement with Errol. (Bezuidenhout and Errol would marry and divorce twice.)
Errol claimed that following this divorce, a judge granted him custody of his daughter with Bezuidenhout, and two judges rejected the stepdaughter’s abuse allegations. But the Times could not find court records or judges capable of verifying Errol’s claim.
Around 1999, Errol and Bezuidenhout remarried. In 2002, they traveled to California to visit Elon (Errol’s oldest child from his first marriage, to Maye Haldeman), who bought them a $2 million house in Malibu. During their stay, according to family members and personal notes, the stepdaughter, by then 14, walked in on Errol in her room allegedly sniffing her dirty underwear.
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The police were called and a complaint was filed with child protective services in Los Angeles. (A spokesperson for the agency declined to comment to the Times, and the LAPD denied a records request.) A restraining order was issued against Erroll, according to three people.
Errol denied the allegation, saying he had been cleaning up his stepdaughter’s room after returning from a trip and finding the house “in a terrible state.”
Afterward, Elon reportedly moved his father from the Malibu house to a boat in Los Angeles, and then back to South Africa. But Errol claimed he left the United States on his own, though he was soon reliant on Elon and his brother, Kimbal, for financial support.
While Elon reportedly explored keeping Errol’s children and stepchildren with Bezuidenhout in California, and even becoming their legal guardian, the family chose to return to South Africa in 2003. Bezuidenhout and Errol divorced again in 2005, though in 2009 they reconnected. Around that time, the stepdaughter, now 21, claimed that Errol kissed her and stuck his tongue into her mouth.
She detailed the incident in an application for an interim protection order in South Africa, in which she wrote of Errol, “I don’t want him to be allowed to come close to me.” The application was granted.
Errol denied the allegation and claimed that his stepdaughter “inappropriately kissed” him while he was sleeping.
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As an adult, the stepdaughter struggled with drug abuse and homelessness. She told the Times that she tied her drug use to the trauma she experienced growing up. While Elon provided some support to the stepdaughter from afar, when she was 29, the stepdaughter reached out to Errol for help as well. The two became intimate and had at least one child together. (The stepdaughter has said they had one child, while Errol has suggested in other interviews that they may have had more. He told the Times it was “none of your business” how many they’d had.)
In 2022, Errol allegedly groped their five-year-old son, according to family members. Bezuidenhout texted a relative the following year, “He said, ‘dad gropes his behind.’ He screamed, ‘no dad.’” A police investigation was opened, but prosecutors ultimately dropped the case due to insufficient evidence.
Errol said of the allegation, “There was no evidence because this is nonsense.”
The other allegations of abuse against Errol were mentioned in the application for the interim protection order filed by the stepdaughter. She claimed that Errol also abused one of his stepsons, who later died in a car accident, as well as his two daughters with Bezuidenhout.
While the stepdaughter did not provide details, Bezuidenhout did reference abuse allegations from one of her two daughters with Errol in a letter she sent Elon around 2007. Another relative mentioned the same allegations contained in the protective order in a note sent to Elon in 2010.
Errol called the accusation that he abused his stepson “nonsense,” and the claims involving his daughters “absurd.”
Elon declined to comment for the Times story, and a representative did not immediately return additional requests for comment.
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Over the years, Elon has been frank — if not exactly full of details — when discussing his problems with his estranged father. In a 2017 Rolling Stone story, he called Errol “such a terrible human being,” but did not provide specifics. “My dad will have a carefully thought-out plan of evil,” he said. “He will plan evil … You have no idea about how bad. Almost every crime you can possibly think of, he has done. Almost every evil thing you could possibly think of, he has done.”
In Walter Isaacson’s 2023 authorized biography, Elon said his father had been “uncomfortably attentive” to his stepsister. He added that he was angry with Errol for his “inappropriate behavior.”
