While going over the script for The Tale with actress Laura Dern a slew of memories Common had kept buried for years came flooding back to him. BET reports;
“One day, while talking through the script with Laura, old memories surprisingly flashed in my mind,” he wrote. “I caught my breath and just kept looping the memories over and over, like rewinding an old VHS tape… I said, ‘Laura, I think I was abused.'”
Common discussed the painful memories further.
“I was excited for a road trip I was about to take with my family,” he recalled. “My mother; my godmother, Barbara; her son and my godbrother Skeet; and his relative, who I’ll call Brandon.”
Common, 47, said that the relative whom he renamed “Brandon” sexually assaulted him at their aunt’s home in Cleveland while they shared a bed one night on the trip.
“At some point, I felt Brandon’s hand on me,” he wrote. “I pushed him away. I don’t remember saying a whole lot besides, ‘No, no, no.'”
Common admitted that forgetting the ordeal was a way of coping with the abuse he suffered from “Brandon”, whom he claims he hasn’t seem in over twenty-five years. He also says that he’s forgiven “Brandon” for the part he played as he tries to move forward and help others who may have been through the same thing he has.
“I just pushed the whole thing out of my head,” he admitted. “Maybe it’s a matter of survival — Even now, two years after that flash resurgence of memories, as I’m writing, I’m still working through all of this in myself and with my therapist.”
Common is a remarkable brotha to share his pain with the rest of the world in hopes that his story will help others. And it’s that same kind of courage that makes him one of the most respected entertainers in the game today.
