Sum 41’s Deryck Whibley says he was sexually abused by an ex-manager

Sum 41 frontman Deryck Whibley claims in his new memoir that he was groomed and sexually abused by the band’s former manager Greig Nori when he was a teenager and Nori was in his 30s.

The allegations, first reported in a Los Angeles Times article, appear in Whibley’s book Walking Disaster: My Life Through Heaven and Hell. In it, Whibley writes that Nori kissed him without consent and instigated sexual encounters during Sum 41’s formative years in Ajax, Ontario, and into the early 2000s.

Whibley never told his bandmates about the alleged abuse and only confided in his then-partner Avril Lavigne and his now-wife Ariana Cooper, who helped him understand the relationship between him and Nori as abusive. After years of thinking about and learning about the MeToo movement, Whibley told the LA Times that he realized he had been prepared for this.

“As excited as I am to share this open and honest memoir of my life story, I’m also scared,” reads a post on Sum 41’s Instagram page.

Nori, a musician from Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., denies the claims in the book as “false claims.” He told the Globe and Mail that he had hired a defamation lawyer.

The allegations

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In Hiking disasterWhibley describes how he first met Nori when he snuck backstage at a Treble Charger concert when he was 16 years old. Back then, Whibley was in high school trying to make his music dreams come true, and Treble Charger frontman Nori was his hero.

Whibley invited Nori to one of Sum 41’s upcoming performances, which led to a mentorship that eventually led to Nori leading the band.

One evening when Whibley was 18, he and Nori were at a rave party when the older musician asked Whibley to come to the bathroom so he could take ecstasy. In the bathroom stall, Whibley writes that Nori grabbed him and kissed him “passionately.”

Nori allegedly told the Sum 41 frontman that the two had a “special” connection and that the relationship was worth exploring. Nori would have been around 36 years old at the time.

At the time, Whibley tried to brush off the encounter because Nori was a trustworthy person in his life.

“When I was high it seemed like a cool experiment, but when I was sober it felt wrong,” Whibley writes. “Greig was always pushing for something to happen when we were together. I felt like I was being pressured into doing something against my will. It was a strange feeling because for the most part I completely trusted Greig and still thought he was a great person, which made everything so confusing.”

Whibley writes that he tried multiple times to end the sexual aspect of their relationship, only to be accused of homophobia by Nori. The Treble Charger frontman reportedly told Whibley that he owed him something for helping get Sum 41 off the ground.

In 2004, Whibley began dating Lavigne, a fellow Canadian pop-punk star, and he opened up about what happened between him and Nori.

“This is abuse! He sexually abused you,” Lavigne told Whibley, according to the memoir. Lavigne and Whibley separated in 2009 after three years of marriage. Whibley’s current wife, Ariana Cooper, had a similar reaction when he told her, he said.

Eventually, Whibley said, Nori stopped pressuring him into sexual encounters after a mutual friend found out about the relationship and said it was abusive. In 2005, Sum 41 fired Nori as manager.

As Whibley grew older, eventually reaching the age Nori was when they first met, the Sum 41 frontman began to better understand the power imbalance in their relationship.

“It all became so clear,” Whibley told the LA Times. “Then, about a year later, the Me Too thing started. I started hearing stories about personal care and it all started to make sense.”

In an interview with the Toronto Star, Whibley said he wasn’t worried about the memoir’s potential legal ramifications.

“You can’t sue someone for telling the truth,” Whibley said. “If he wants to challenge it, I welcome it. Let’s go to court. Let’s go under oath. That would be incredibly great! I welcome this part…. Let’s finally put it on record!”

Sum 41 is currently touring its final shows and has booked Toronto’s Scotiabank Arena as its final stop on January 30, 2025.

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