Why Celebrities Like Rihanna, Kim and Cara Are Tweeting #FreeCyntoiaBrown

In 2004, Cyntoia Brown shot and killed a 43-year-old Nashville, Tennessee man named Johnny Allen. She was a 16-year-old victim of sex trafficking who was living with a pimp named “Kutthroat,” who repeatedly raped, physically and mentally abused, drugged and forced the teenage girl into sex work; Allen was another adult man who had purchased her for sex. Two years later, after being tried as an adult, Brown was found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison.

Now, more than a decade since her conviction, celebrities like Rihanna, Cara Delevingne, Kim Kardashian West and T.I. are drawing renewed attention to her case by sharing Instagram and Twitter posts with the hashtag #FreeCyntoiaBrown. Brown, now 29, will not be eligible for parole until she is 67 years old, at which point she will have served 51 years of her sentence.

The social media campaign calls her case a miscarriage of justice, and is urging government officials to overturn Brown’s life sentence, saying she was a victim, not a perpetrator. Many of the tweets and posts include a picture of Brown when she was sentenced, which is a startling reminder that she was a literal child at the time of her murder trial—and when she was forced into the sex trade and serially abused by a pimp she called her boyfriend.

A petition on MoveOn.org calling for Brown to receive a presidential pardon has gained traction in recent days with nearly 300,000 signatures at the time this story was published. While the petition was first started in 2013, public interest in the case was sparked anew when Fox 17 News in Nashville, Tennessee—where Brown was trafficked as a child—ran a news story on her case on November 16.

In the segment, Fox 17 News shares footage from filmmaker Daniel Birman, whose documentary about Brown, Me Facing Life: Cyntoia’s Story, called attention to the case when it aired in 2011. Birman spent seven years interviewing Brown and documenting her time in prison, in addition to painting a deeply traumatic picture of her life even before she became a victim of sex trafficking.

Birman explained to Fox 17 that Brown came from a family with a long history of sexual and physical abuse toward women. “This is a young girl who’s at the tail end of three generations of violence against women,” he said. (Brown’s grandmother, mother and Brown herself had all been victims of rape.) “She had no chance.”

During her murder trial in 2004, Brown testified that after running away at 16, she began living in a motel with “Kutthroat,” the pimp who forced her into sex work while violently abusing her. She said she was regularly beaten, choked, dragged, raped and threatened at gunpoint. Her lawyers argued that this horrific experience, coupled with drug-fuelled fear and paranoia, drove her to shoot Allen. Additionally, brain scans indicate that Brown shows signs of fetal alcohol syndrome, which slows brain development and impacts impulse control, as a result of her mother’s heavy drinking during her pregnancy.

Since her conviction, state laws have changed dramatically and if Brown were arrested today, she would be recognized as a child victim of human trafficking.

Derri Smith, Founder of End Slavery TN was also interviewed by Fox 17 News and emphasizes that Brown was a child at the time of the crimes. “She did kill someone, she deeply regrets it, but she was a child and she was being exploited,” Smith said.

“There’s no such thing as a child prostitute or a teen prostitute. I think we’ve had to have a cultural mind shift.”

If you have been sexually harassed or assaulted, contact the Assaulted Women’s Helpline at 1-866-863-0511 or find a rape crisis centre or women’s centre in your province via The Canadian Association of Sexual Assault Centres.

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