Jonwayne Pens Open Letter About Being Sexually Assaulted as a Child

In the midst of a continual stream of horrific allegations against Hollywood exec Harvey Weinstein and the subsequent #MeToo movement spotlighting survivors of sexual assault, people from all areas of entertainment have discussed their own experiences of being preyed upon. The latest to do so is Jonwayne, who recently wrote an open letter to detail the moment he was sexually assaulted as an 8-year-old.

In the letter, Jonwayne describes the beginning of the abuse, which started with a man sitting him down on his lap and showing him pornographic images. The 27-year-old rapper didn't go into many details of the encounter, but he did say the instance of abuse might have played a role in some of the behaviors he'd exhibit in subsequent years.

"Last year, when I had finally realized what happened, I looked up the long-lasting effects of childhood abuse and it was as if I was looking in a mirror," wrote Jonwayne. "Poor self-esteem, bad hygiene, PTSD, suicidal thoughts, but what stuck out most were substance abuse and hypersexuality."

That hypersexuality apparently led Wayne to a pornography addiction. "I was addicted to porn as a kid," he revealed. "Ever since that moment happened to me, I sought to make sense of it. I even catfished adults growing up in chat rooms, trying to find an answer to my pain. I never really grew out of that part until I stopped drinking. That's when I took my musical leave and rebuilt myself from the ground up, attempting to seek out something that was under my nose all along. I was a broken man but I would not let myself become part of a predetermined cycle."

Jonwayne, who's currently in the midst of his Rap Album 2 tour, goes on to say the incident affected how he thought about and approached women. "Up until that point, I had objectified women from afar. I flirted with fans online with little knowledge of who I was talking to; a screen name was just that," Jonwayne wrote. "Thinking back, I wish I had acted with more scrutiny. I wish I was more aware of the responsibility that [had] been placed on my shoulders. It really is difficult to place myself within those shoes considering how different of a man I've become now that I've confronted what happened to me all those years ago. And now when I look back at how I used to view women, it makes me nauseous."

In another part of the letter, the Rap Album 2 artist explains the cycle of abuse, one which sees victims of abuse evolve into abusers. "What a lot of men go through is a cycle, predestined by abuse," Jonwayne affirmed.

He continued, "The abused become the abusers, and while I never did quite reach that point, it breaks my heart that our culture is subject to this. As a man, I am incredibly happy about the change in consciousness our culture is having right now. It is freeing a lot of us who experience trauma as kids and who never felt like there was a way out. Before all of these allegations about all these bigwigs came out, I was sitting with all of this like a brick in my chest. This global conversation has saved my life. I couldn't be happier to experience the salvation of toxic masculinity, which had a firm grip on me for years. To anyone I have offended with how I have behaved when I was lost, I offer my deepest apologies. I can only shake up the cycle from where I stand and hopefully encourage others to do the same."

Read the entirety of Jonwayne's revealing open letter for yourself in the tweet below.

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