A 29-YEAR-OLD woman who killed a man who hired her as a prostitute when she was 16 is receiving a swell of support from celebrities.
Cyntoia Brown has spent the past 13 years in prison and will not be eligible for parole until she is at least 67.
This week celebrities such as Kim Kardashian, Rihanna, Le Bron James and Cara Delevingne have given public support to Brown and are using the hashtag #FreeCyntoiaBrown.
According to the New York Times, Brown had a difficult childhood. She was adopted but dropped out of elementary school and ran away to Nashville.
She was living in a motel with a pimp known as Kut Throat when she became a prostitute.
Testifying during her trial, Associated Press reports that Brown said:
He would explain to me that some people were born whores, and that I was one, and I was a slut, and nobody’d want me but him, and the best thing I could do was just learn to be a good whore.
In August 2004, a 43-year-old man called Johnny Allen picked up Brown in his truck and drove her to his home where he showed her guns and the pair then got into bed.
Court documents reveal that Brown had thought Allen was reaching for a gun when she pulled a handgun from her purse and shot him.
She then took Allen’s wallet and two of his guns before going to a hotel where she was later arrested.
Cyntoia was tried as an adult and the jury rejected her claim of self-defence, handing down a life sentence.
A documentary about her life “Me Facing Life: Cyntoia’s Story” was part of PBS’s Independent Lens series broadcast in 2011.
It’s not known what caused the celebrity support this week, although FOX 17 reported that it was denied a request to interview her last week.
It described Brown as a child sex slave who was physically, sexually and verbally abused.
However Jeff Burks, who prosecuted Brown, told Fox 17 that she shouldn’t be considered a victim.
There has been a group of people who have wanted to make Brown a victim and a celebrity since this happened.
“She was not ‘trafficked’ nor was she a ‘sex slave.’ It’s not fair to the victim and his family that the other side of this case is so seldom heard.”
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