August Brown | Los Angeles Times (TNS)
Greig Nori, the former manager for pop punk band Sum 41, has denied the claims in singer Deryck Whibley’s memoir accusing him of sexual coercion and abuse.
“The accusation that I initiated the relationship is false. I did not initiate it. Whibley initiated it, aggressively,” Nori wrote in a statement to the Toronto Star on Thursday.
“When the relationship began Whibley was an adult, as was I,” Nori continued. “The accusation that I pressured Whibley to continue the relationship is false. The accusation that I pressured Whibley to continue the relationship by accusing him of homophobia is false. Ultimately the relationship simply faded out. Consensually. Our business relationship continued.”
Nori did not immediately return requests for comment from The Times.
Nori, now 61, was the singer for the Canadian punk group Treble Charger, a hometown hero to Whibley and host of the MuchMusic reality show “Disband.” Nori later managed Sum 41 as it achieved global success with 2001’s “All Killer No Filler” and 2002’s “Does This Look Infected?”
In Whibley’s new memoir “Walking Disaster,” he alleges Nori groomed and abused him for years, beginning when he was 16 and Nori was 34.
“It all became so clear,” Whibley told The Times in an interview. “Then about a year later, the Me Too thing started happening. I started hearing stories of grooming, and it all started to make sense.”
“He controlled everything in my life, but even the rest of the guys through the band,” Whibley continued. “We were all under his wing. Me more, obviously. But he was such a controlling person.”
After firing Nori in the 2000s, Sum 41 released four more albums between 2007 and 2019, and was nominated for a Grammy in 2012 for hard rock/metal performance. In 2024, he reunited with Sum 41 to release its final LP, the double album “Heaven :x: Hell.”
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