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In his new memoir, “Let Love Have The Last Word,” Common opens up about being sexually assaulted as a child. He recalls being 9 or 10 years old when someone related to his God-mother molested him.
He writes, “At some point I felt Brandon’s hand on me.” He named the abuser “Brandon” for privacy purposes. “I pushed him away. I don’t remember saying a whole lot besides ‘No, no, no.’”
He also shared that he “suppressed” the moment in his brain, and it only surfaced while he was working through a scene with actress Laura Den. “I just pushed the whole thing out of my head,” he wrote. “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.“
“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 writes that therapy has helped him, and that he has forgiven his abuser.