Deryck Whibley, the frontman for the Canadian rock group Sum 41, is speaking out against a former manager and alleging sexual and verbal abuse.
Whibley, 44, makes the claims in his upcoming memoir, Walking Disaster: My Life Through Heaven and Hell. In it, the singer says Greig Nori began being inappropriate and grooming the singer when he was only 16. Nori, a fellow musician, was 34 at the time.
“Greig had one requirement to be our manager—he wanted total control,” an excerpt of the memoir published in the Los Angeles Times reads. “We couldn’t talk to anyone but him, because the music business is ‘full of snakes and liars’ and he was the only person we could trust.”
Nori allegedly gave Whibley drugs and alcohol, and when the teenager tried to shut things down, Nori called him homophobic and implied that he consented to the relationship.
The sexual abuse stopped after a mutual friend learned of Nori’s assaults. Whibley would later tell his then-wife, pop star Avril Lavigne, of his experiences with Nori. “That’s abuse! He sexually abused you,” she said in response.
Nori then allegedly ramped up the mental torture and began trying to ice him out of the group. According to Whibley, he never told his bandmates about what Nori did to him. The band would end up parting ways with the abusive manager in 2005.
The Globe and Mail reported that Nori was unaware of the abuse claims until coverage began to emerge on Monday evening. He told the paper they were “false allegations” and that he had retained a defamation lawyer.
Abuse aside, Whibley tells the paper he was unsure at first about writing a book.
“I don’t look at my life as anything worth reading… I’m just a guy who wrote some songs and had some success and went through a couple things,” he said.
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