Alicia Keys suggested that she was sexually manipulated by disgraced photographer Terry Richardson, when she was a teenager, MTO News has learned.
The beautiful singer says she felt “manipulated” and “objectified” by Terry, who made her open her shirt and pull down the top of her jeans.
Alicia made the stunning allegations in her new book, “More Myself,” when the photographer convinced the teen singer’s team that he needed to photograph her alone. Terry then allegedly told her, “Open up your shirt a little” and “Pull the top of your jeans down a bit in the front.”
“My spirit is screaming that something is wrong, that this feels sleazy. But my protests, lodged in the back of my throat, can’t make their way out,” Keys writes. “I swallow my misgivings, tuck my thumb between the denim and my skin, and obey.”
According to Alicia, she went home and cried after the shoot.
“This isn’t about me showing some skin, which I’ll do on my own terms, for my own purposes, in the coming years,” she writes. “It’s about feeling manipulated. It’s about being objectified.”
She said her manager at the time was appalled when he saw the magazine cover a few months later and Keys says she didn’t recognize the woman in the photo and was “embarrassed” and “ashamed” of it.
“I swear that I’ll never again let someone rob me of my power,” Keys writes, adding, “It’s a promise I still work to keep.”