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Bieber mom writes of painful past of an abused girl
Source: Agencies |
September 26, 2012, Wednesday
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PATTIE Mallette was 18, living in a home for pregnant girls after years of unrelenting sex abuse and depression when she gave birth to a boy she thought she'd name Jesse, a boy whose first cry sounded like a song.
Well, the baby seemed more like a Justin after he popped out. And his last name isn't Mallette. It's Bieber.
You'd have to be firmly under a rock not to know at least a little bit about Justin Bieber's YouTube-to-riches story, his loyal fan base of Beliebers, or 28 million Twitter followers.
What you probably don't know are his mother's struggles, starting with the painful divorce of her parents, through years of emotional turmoil and hard partying that made school a blur, and her eventual turn to God after a suicide attempt about six months before Justin was conceived.
Mallette, 37, has laid bare her past in a new book, "Nowhere but Up: The story of Justin Bieber's Mom," out recently from the inspirational publisher Revell. It's a powerful, plainspoken story, written in collaboration with A.J. Gregory. A portion of proceeds have been promised to shelters like the one that harbored Mallette in Canada when her mother kicked her out of the house after she got pregnant.
Her troubles began well before that, however, and Mallette has forgotten little. "Writing the book was part of my healing process," she said. "Just having to relive things as I'm writing it down. There are parts that are still painful to go over."
She was two when she watched her alcoholic, abusive father walk out the door. She was about three when she was first sexually abused by someone she knew. Mallette doesn't identify her numerous abusers, including a male baby sitter and the grandfather of a friend, but the last words of her book's acknowledgments speak volumes. "To my abusers: I forgive you."
"I was sexually violated so many times that as the years went by it began to feel normal," wrote Mallette. "It's a strange marriage, knowing something is wrong yet at the same time finding it familiar and commonplace."
Fear, self-loathing and the notion that she was an unlovable, "dirty girl" stretched through her life, and she says the "void of having a father in my heart" led her down rough paths - drinking and drugging to oblivion, beginning at age 14.
There was pot smoking and LSD. She left home at 16. To support herself and pay for her habits, she turned to petty crime and pot dealing and the toxic, on-again-off-again, four-year relationship she had with Justin's father Jeremy Bieber, that began when she was 15. At 17, she threw herself in front of a truck and landed in a mental ward.
Sex with Jeremy left her pregnant. She resisted intense pressure from those around her to have an abortion: "I knew that I had to do what it took. I just couldn't abort him."
Well, the baby seemed more like a Justin after he popped out. And his last name isn't Mallette. It's Bieber.
You'd have to be firmly under a rock not to know at least a little bit about Justin Bieber's YouTube-to-riches story, his loyal fan base of Beliebers, or 28 million Twitter followers.
What you probably don't know are his mother's struggles, starting with the painful divorce of her parents, through years of emotional turmoil and hard partying that made school a blur, and her eventual turn to God after a suicide attempt about six months before Justin was conceived.
Mallette, 37, has laid bare her past in a new book, "Nowhere but Up: The story of Justin Bieber's Mom," out recently from the inspirational publisher Revell. It's a powerful, plainspoken story, written in collaboration with A.J. Gregory. A portion of proceeds have been promised to shelters like the one that harbored Mallette in Canada when her mother kicked her out of the house after she got pregnant.
Her troubles began well before that, however, and Mallette has forgotten little. "Writing the book was part of my healing process," she said. "Just having to relive things as I'm writing it down. There are parts that are still painful to go over."
She was two when she watched her alcoholic, abusive father walk out the door. She was about three when she was first sexually abused by someone she knew. Mallette doesn't identify her numerous abusers, including a male baby sitter and the grandfather of a friend, but the last words of her book's acknowledgments speak volumes. "To my abusers: I forgive you."
"I was sexually violated so many times that as the years went by it began to feel normal," wrote Mallette. "It's a strange marriage, knowing something is wrong yet at the same time finding it familiar and commonplace."
Fear, self-loathing and the notion that she was an unlovable, "dirty girl" stretched through her life, and she says the "void of having a father in my heart" led her down rough paths - drinking and drugging to oblivion, beginning at age 14.
There was pot smoking and LSD. She left home at 16. To support herself and pay for her habits, she turned to petty crime and pot dealing and the toxic, on-again-off-again, four-year relationship she had with Justin's father Jeremy Bieber, that began when she was 15. At 17, she threw herself in front of a truck and landed in a mental ward.
Sex with Jeremy left her pregnant. She resisted intense pressure from those around her to have an abortion: "I knew that I had to do what it took. I just couldn't abort him."
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