Child Exploitation and the Fall of Pop Icons

 Jay Terry is a graduate of Vanderbilt Divinity School with over a decade of experience working with children of all ages including those with behavioral issues and emotional disturbances. She also serves as the Youth Activities Director for Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines and specializes in pop culture as a means for coping and healing for adolescents. 

During the 51st annual Grammy awards on February 8, 2009, news of a brutal attack stunned the world. Beloved R&B singer Chris Brown had been arrested for a horrific assault on his then girlfriend Rihanna. At the moment when the story first broke, a Wrigley’s commercial for Doublemint gum featuring the R&B star was airing during the Grammy awards in front of millions. It was immediately pulled off the air before the ad had even concluded. In the hours after news of the attack became public, word spread like wildfire. Brown’s rising star had started to fall. By the time the grisly images of Rihanna’s battered and bruised face hit the media, his reign as America’s sweetheart had come to a shocking end. 

Chris Brown is far from the only artist to face humiliation after public meltdowns and media scandal. In 2014, pop singer Justin Bieber was arrested and charged with driving under the influence and resisting arrest. In 2008, Rapper Dwayne Michael Carter (also known as Lil Wayne) was arrested and charged with drug and illegal firearms possession. Famed child actor Drake Bell plead guilty to driving under the influence and child endangerment when he was caught exchanging sexually explicit messages with underaged girls.

Recently I was reminiscing about old R&B favorites of mine growing up. I was listening to songs by Chris Brown; songs I hadn’t heard in years which were released before his assault on Rihanna. I heard a recurring theme in these songs; themes I hadn’t noticed when I was a kid but that deeply disturbed me when I listened to them as an adult. In his 2005 hit single “Run it!”, Brown sings the lyrics, “I can definitely show you things to have you saying I can’t be 16”. In his song “Gimme That” he sings the lyrics, “The young boy just turned 16… mama you may be three years older but you hot. Gimme that…I could show you why I make straight As in school.” These things got me thinking about what it must have been like to grow into adulthood the way he did. 

Brown was a normal child from a normal family. His father was a gas station worker and corrections officer. His mother was a director at a day care center. He went to a public high school in Virginia until his talent opened an opportunity for him to sign a record deal with Jive records in 2004. That was when everything changed. He was only 15 years old when he dropped out of school and moved to New York to pursue his music career. He became a commodity, snatched from the only life he had ever known and shuttled all over the country to perform for crowds of thousands of screaming fans. Everywhere he went, adult women were tearing at him for scraps of his clothing. With little to no guidance, he had no one to tell him that the adult women knocking on his dressing room door at night were not his friends, and what they offered him was not love. It must have felt so exciting for him to be pursued by hundreds of older women when he was just a child, too young to understand why he should say no. One can only imagine the type of residual psychological effects left behind on his psyche after countless nights of lasciviousness with women who only wanted to exploit him for their own sexual gratification.

This pattern of child sexual exploitation is something that all of the stars on this list have in common. In a newly resurfaced video, Lil Wayne can be seen hanging out with a group of his friends. He recounts a story of being raped for the first time when he was 11 years old. He later had his first daughter when he was 14. In the video, he talks about how he was at a party with other rappers in the industry when a ‘mentor’ of his, rapper Birdman, prompted a woman to perform a sex act on him. He goes on to say, “I was never the same after that” as his friends look on and laugh. 

In the wildly popular documentary “Quiet on Set” Actor Drake Bell reveals being raped almost daily by a producer on the set of the hit Nickelodeon show “Drake and Josh” and resurfaced videos are making the rounds on social media of then 15 year old star Justin Bieber receiving sexually suggestive and predatory attention from disgraced R&B singer P. Diddy. 

The purpose of this opinion piece is not to excuse the behavior of these stars. Each person is responsible for their own choices and the activities in which these celebrities engaged are inexcusable and they should be held accountable. This article is, however, intended to highlight the fact that we treat child sexual abuse very differently when the victim of the abuse is male. Many of the pop culture icons who make headlines for reckless ad riotous behavior have some form of child sexual abuse in their past. The psychological effect of this abuse isn’t something that simply goes away. It is like a tar, thick and adhesive, that attaches itself to the spirits of its victims and follows them wherever they go, making itself known in the things they say and do. Until we as a society get serious about sexual violence against children and support and protect male victims as fervently as female victims, this cycle of violence, abuse and trauma will continue.