In his brand new memoir, Walking Disaster: My Life Through Heaven and Hell, Sum 41 frontman Deryck Whibley opens up completely about his time in the spotlight, and levels claims of sexual abuse by a former manager.
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The Sum 41 singer, in his just-released memoir, professes that he was "groomed" by the band's first manager and frontman of the Canadian band Treble Charger, Greig Nori, who he says "pressured" him into a sexual relationship that ran its course before ultimately being fired in 2004.
Deryck adds that he was sexually and verbally abused by Nori over the years, after first meeting when Whibley was 16 and Nori was 34, backstage at a Treble Charger show. Eventually, they grew their friendship into a "special connection," he says, with Nori taking on a mentor role.
"Greig had one requirement to be our manager — he wanted total control,” Whibley explains, adding the band, “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.” Confusion set in, he says, according to the Los Angeles Times, when Nori allegedly "passionately" kissed an 18-year-old Deryck in a bathroom and told him they should explore their relationship further. "He was so relentless and convincing that after a while, I started to believe that maybe he was right," Whibley writes.
Experiment they did, but Whibley alleges that when he wanted to end things Nori would become angry and call him "homophobic." Deryck says, "He told me this was all my fault to begin with because I should never have said yes to it in the first place. I started this and now he was in it with me so I couldn’t just stop." That verbal abuse, he says, continued and got worse as Sum 41's success grew and Nori tried to set the rest of the members against one another. In 2004, they fired him.
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Finally, it was a mutual friend who noted to Whibley that the relationship was abusive, His now ex-wife, Avril Lavigne, told him, "That’s abuse! He sexually abused you,” Whibley recalls. When he later told his current wife, Ariana Cooper, she had the same reaction. “He groomed you from a young teen and mentally forced you. You said no, you didn’t want to do this anymore, and he told you it had to continue or you would lose everything. That’s psychological, mental, and physical abuse."
Deryck Whibley's Walking Disaster: My Life Through Heaven and Hell is now available everywhere -- grab your copy HERE. -- and join him on his highly anticipated U.S. book tour kicking off today and making stops in four cities across the U.S.: Jersey City, Boston, Los Angeles, and Las Vegas, The first three stops include an intimate conversation with different renowned moderators about his triumphs, struggles, and accomplishments throughout his career and in his personal life. All attendees will leave with an exclusive look into the making of Deryck’s memoir and a signed copy of the book.