Sean Tuohy says family is ‘devastated’ by Oher allegations

Sean Tuohy of “The Blind Side” fame said Tuesday the family is “devastated” by allegations that he and his wife placed NFL player Michael Oher into conservatorship for profit, rather than adopting him as they claimed.

In court papers filed on Monday, Oher alleged that rather than doing something altruistic, the wealthy white Tuohys had enabled themselves to make business deals in his name, then profited off the transaction. However, Tuohy said nothing could be further from the truth.

Tuohy said conservatorship was the only option when it came time to negotiate the then-18-year-old football player’s participation in the game at the University of Mississippi. NCAA rules regulating student participation in athletics dictated that Oher be part of the family in order to qualify as a student athlete at Ole Miss, as the school is nicknamed. At that point Oher was 18, though he had been living with the family for two years.

“We contacted lawyers who had told us that we couldn’t adopt over the age of 18; the only thing we could do was to have a conservatorship,” Tuohy told the Daily Memphian. “We were so concerned it was on the up-and-up that we made sure the biological mother came to court.”

Oher also said that Sean, wife Leigh Anne Tuohy and their two children had been paid $250,000 each from the Oscar-winning movie, plus 2.5% of future defined net proceeds, via a contract titled “Life Story Rights Agreement,” but that he got nothing from the movie that grossed $300 million — a claim Tuohy also refuted.

“We were never offered money; we never asked for money,” Tuohy, 63, told the Memphian. “My money is well-documented; you can look up how much I sold my company for.”

Tuohy recently sold his fast-food franchise business for a reported $213 million, according to the Mississippi Clarion-Ledger. He has also worked as a sports commentator.

“The last thing I needed was 40 grand from a movie,” Tuohy said, noting that he would end the conservatorship if that’s what Oher wanted. “It’s upsetting to think we would make money off any of our children. But we’re going to love Michael at 37 just like we loved him at 16.”

With News Wire Services