Show caption ‘I want to be a person who helps break cycles of violence’ … Common. Photograph: Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images Music Rapper Common alleges childhood sexual assault Oscar-winner says he recalled the traumatic memory while working with Laura Dern on the film The Tale Ben Beaumont-Thomas @ben_bt Wed 8 May 2019 11.12 BST Share on Facebook

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Common, the Oscar-winning rapper, actor and activist, has alleged that he was sexually abused as a child by a family friend.

In his memoir Let Love Have the Last Word, he recalls a trip to his aunt’s house aged nine or 10, accompanied by a relative of a family friend. He alleges that when they had to share a bed together one night, “Brandon” molested him and tried to have him reciprocate. “I kept repeating ‘no’ and pushing him away,” Common writes. “I felt a deep and sudden shame for what happened.”

He says he “pushed the whole thing out of my head”, and didn’t recall the incident until working on The Tale, a 2018 film whose storyline features a woman investigating childhood rape cases, and questioning her own past. “One day, while talking through the script with Laura [Dern], old memories surprisingly flashed in my mind,” he writes. “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.’”

He writes that he has forgiven his alleged attacker: “I want to be a person who helps break cycles of violence.”