Sum 41’s Deryck Whibley claims in his memoir that he was sexually abused by a former manager

“Walking Disaster: My Life Through Heaven and Hell,” a memoir by Sum 41’s Deryck Whibley, reveals a painful secret the frontman says he kept from his bandmates for years and claims he was told by the band’s former manager Band being sexually abused was the height of his fame as a young man.

In an interview with the Los Angeles Times in conjunction with the book’s Oct. 8 release, Whibley says, “I don’t view my life as something worth reading. . . I’m just a guy who wrote a few songs, had success and went through a few things. But then the idea of ​​completing Sum 41 came to me [with a book] is a good way to detach myself from my past. I’m starting a new chapter.

The musician goes on to say that the manager Greig Nori was a “hero in his hometown” for him at the time, as he was a fellow musician in the band Treble Charger. Happy to have caught his attention, Whibley reveals that things took a dark turn when Nori started forcing drinks on him, distancing him from his family and eventually forcing herself on him sexually.

In one passage from the memoir, Whibley writes of a time when Nori grabbed his face and kissed him “passionately” while he was drunk and high on ecstasy at a rave when the singer was just 18.

“He controlled everything in my life, but also the rest of the guys through the band,” he continues. “We were all under his wing. Me more of course. But he was such a controlling person.”

The band eventually fired Nori and Whibley kept the manager’s predatory actions a secret until now. The singer says the start of the Me Too movement helped him better understand the gravity of what was happening to him: “Everything started to make sense.”