Chris Brown and Rihanna are doing the media circuit this week, breaking their silence about the domestic violence in their former relationship to help promote the new albums they have out in the coming weeks. Brown has a 30-minute segment for MTV which airs tomorrow; Rihanna beat him to the punch (too soon?) with a two-part interview with Diane Sawyer that just aired this morning. The full thing runs on 20/20 tomorrow night.
Highlights after the jump.
On how this could happen to “someone so strong” “I am strong. This happened to me. I didn’t cause this. I didn’t do it. This happened to me and it could happen to anybody. There are a lot of women who have experienced what I did, but not in the public. So it just made it really difficult. I just felt like, ‘Oh my god, here goes my little bit of privacy, just exposed.’ It’s something that nobody wants anybody to know. So here I am with the whole world knowing.”
On why she’s ashamed “I didn’t want people to think that that’s the kind of person — I fell in love with that person. That’s embarrassing. That’s embarrassing that that’s the type of person that I fell in love with. So far in love. So unconditional that I went back.”
On going back to Chris Brown “I don’t want that to happen. That’s not what I want to teach people. But again, people — I’m a human being and people put me on a very unrealistic pedestal. All these expectations. I’m not perfect. Also, it’s pretty natural for that to be the first reaction. It’s completely normal to go back. You start lying to yourself. The minute the physical wounds go away, you want this thing to go away. This a memory you don’t want to have ever again.”
On her responsibility to other girls “When I realized the my selfish decision for love could result into some young girl getting killed, I could not be easy with that part. I couldn’t be held responsible for telling them go back. Even if Chris never hit me again, who’s to say that their boyfriend won’t. Who’s to say they won’t kill these girls. And these are young girls. I just didn’t realize how much of an impact I had on these girls’ lives until that happened. It was a wake up call for me big time, especially when I took myself out of the situation. I’ll say that to any young girl who’s going through domestic violence. Don’t react off of love. F love. Come out of the situation and look at it third person, for what it really is. And then make your decision, because love is so blind.”
Watch the video of Rihanna’s Good Morning America interview here.