Charlamagne Tha God: Trigger Warning
Trigger Warning: This is partly about sexual assault and rape.
Days ago, I was invited into a safe space to share my documentary about global rape and sexual assault, Set Yourself on Fire. After, we sat in silence a bit, passed tissue around, held space for one another, and finally we spoke. The first question asked was, “How and why is a man as vile as Charlamagne so untouchable? Why is he there?”
I’ve never met Charlamagne Tha God. In fact, almost everything I know about him, I found on the first page of a google search. He’s 5’6”, which would explain his demeanor and need to insult others, and his daddy, Larry, once left him in a jail cell for 41 days after his third arrest. The prior two arrests were because Charlamagne Tha God (also known in the streets to his clients as Charles — a pseudonym he gave himself) was a low level drug dealer. Eventually, he was rescued from that cell by Julia, his mother. These two people who raised their son in Moncks Corner, South Carolina likely call him the name they gave him at birth: Lenard. His wife Jessica likely calls him Lenard. I’ve no idea what his children call him. I don’t know the man, but Lenard seems fitting.
I’ve never been invited to share my thoughts on anything artistic, political, or cultural on The Breakfast Club — not that I’m in a position to even be asked and not that I’d accept, knowing now how little they regard the humanity of others, especially Black women. Hell, it was just a few weeks ago that I, and so many others stood with Sil Lai Abrams after The Breakfast Club, as to be expected, invited Russell Simmons, the multiply-accused rapist — her accused rapist — to the show and provided him, a man who once told a victim of sexual assault to give their accuser “a pass,” with a platform to further the show’s apparent mission of making roadkill of Black women. We stood with Sil Lai Abrams as she tweeted Charlamagne, Angela Yee, and DJ Envy, all hosts of the show, “Why? Why do you carry water for this man? Why now? Why are you so tone deaf? You’re all complicit in ensuring that Black women’s right to bodily autonomy continues to be denied. You’re also rape apologists.”
In Tonja Renée Stidhum’s The Root article, The Breakfast Club is Food Poisoning, Tonja questions whether The Breakfast Club has ever been safe for Black women. “Enough is enough,” she says.
No, to my knowledge, Lenard and I have never been in the same room. I’m not sure if this is important for you — the reader — to know, but it’s important to me that I share it.
By the time he was accused in Berkeley, South Carolina County Courts of “knowingly and willfully encouraging, aiding, or causing to do acts which were intended to cause or influence 15 year old Jessica Reid to deport herself in a manner so as to willfully injure or endanger her morals” as well as “willfully, unlawfully, and feloniously engaging in penile/vaginal intercourse” with 15 year old Jessica Reid in 2001, Lenard was able to handle his own legal troubles. In short, the charges stated Jessica was drugged and sexually assaulted. According to public court documents, Jessica was transported by EMS to Summerville Medical Center where, after examination, it was determined that an assault had occurred. Lenard plead guilty to a much lesser charge of contributing to the delinquency of a minor and 15 year old Jessica Reid didn’t get the justice she still seeks. On Twitter and beyond, she’s still fighting to be heard. Her profile bio states: “My name is Jessica Nicole Reid. On June 8, 2001, I was drugged and raped in Moncks Corner, South Carolina. I am a survivor and I will not be silent.”
According to the UK Center for Research on Violence Against Women, “Researchers examining the difficulties of rape survivors throughout the criminal justice process emphasize that a “win” for a prosecutor (e.g., a guilty plea to any charge) may not be the justice sought by a survivor who needs, for example, the truth of her experiences to be publicly acknowledged, or wants to prevent the offender from sexually assaulting others. A plea deal to a lesser charge or a conviction on a non-sexual crime may not feel like justice since the offender is never required to actually admit or acknowledge that he raped the survivor.”
I’ve never met Jessica Reid, but last I heard, she’s working on getting the case reopened.
I don’t know Lenard, but I watched in disgust as he talked about how much he enjoyed watching the child pornography produced by R. Kelly, calling it “the best celebrity sex tape of all time.” Lenard, across platforms, said that watching a grown man ejaculate, urinate, then ejaculate again on a 14-year-old is “one of the most incredible things I’ve ever seen in my life.”
OR
ANOTHER TIME: “Me and my wife dated for a whole year, she would not give me no pussy. Me and my wife hung out one Saturday night and she got sloppy drunk and passed out in my momma’s house and I got that pussy. She was f–king me back, and all that, but she was really drunk. I asked her yesterday, ‘Did I rape you the first time we ever had sex?’ And she goes, ‘I mean in hindsight, yeah.’”
I watched in disgust as so many who publicly state they are doing everything they possibly can to protect Black girls and women publicly praise Lenard on his birthday, June 29th. I suppose even the most vile of humans can be seen as good to someone.
Perhaps — and I say all this facetiously — if I cared to get to know this man a bit more, I’d see what others see when they’re able to look at his insanely long record of disrespect and ignore it. Maybe I’d understand how others are able to hear him joke about what everyone agrees is rape and think nothing of it. If I shared a beer with this man, maybe it wouldn’t sound so bad when he says he drugged a woman and had sex with her while she was incoherent. In his own words, while laughing with cohost Andrew Schulz of Brilliant Idiots: “She wasn’t coherent, but she was up, like when you’re blacked out.” Again, I say all this facetiously. I have absolutely no interest in meeting Lenard and surely after this, I’ll never find myself at The Breakfast Club like so many who apparently have no problem being interviewed by a man like Lenard on a show that openly and loudly embraces men like Russell Simmons.
I don’t know Lenard Larry McKelvey and I don’t know the decisions made at these media or publishing companies like The Hollywood Reporter, MTV, iHeart Radio, Simon & Schuster that allow men who joke about and express their admiration for 14 year olds being raped to keep their jobs. I cried with the survivors of R. Kelly’s abuse and wondered how a man who publicly praised the abuse was allowed to say he sympathizes with the survivors. I don’t know that man, but I know survivors. I know women who’ve run into men like Lenard and question why “Trigger Warning” isn’t tattooed across their forehead. I know survivors who are tired of setting themselves on fire when men like Lenard come. I know survivors who are out of fuel, some on their last match.
To those who disregard those survivors: if you’re going to keep him in our faces and in our ears, at least be honest about why he’s there.
