American singer-songwriter, Lenny Kravitz, has refused to describe unwanted sexual encounters from his childhood as sexual assault
In an interview with Esquire ahead of the release of his first album in five years, the 59-year-old singer–songwriter spoke about unwanted sexual contact with a stranger.
Kravitz wrote about the chilling incident in his 2020 memoir Let Love Rule, but the incident was only briefly described, and he didn’t try to characterize it as an assault.
But when the interviewer Madison Vain quizzed him about the incident, he refused to call it a sexual assault due to the standards of the time, as well as the fact that he didn’t feel ‘traumatized’ afterwards.
It’s unclear exactly when the incident happened, but in the late 1970s or early ’80s, Kravitz’s parents went out of town and left him in the care of a male family friend, who was old enough to be an ‘uncle’ to him.
But then the man invited some of his friends over while Kravitz was sleeping in bed, and a woman allegedly snuck into his room and got into his bed before touching him in a sexual manner, via Esquire.
‘I wasn’t interested in convincing or coercing women [going forward],’ he wrote. ‘I’d been coerced myself and didn’t like it.’
When asked if he now thought of the touching as a sexual assault, a term he didn’t use in the book, he replied, ‘It was an experience and a lesson.’
He continued, ‘Everything doesn’t have to be so…’ before trailing off and readjusting.
He seemed to emphasize that his situation wasn’t a reflection of how others might react to similar situations.
‘I’m not saying that there aren’t things that deserve to be addressed — maybe somebody would say it should have been addressed and that it was, whatever, but that’s the time it was,’ he continued.
‘I lived, and I learned,’ he added, before declaring, ‘I wasn’t traumatized.’
Although Kravitz spoke of how the ‘coerced’ sexual contact affected his relationships with women, he also wrote about how experiencing the dynamics between male and female high schoolers shaped his future relationships.
‘I remember the girls always liking the bad guys,’ he recalled in his memoir, adding that he was determined to chart his own course and be his own man.
‘And it was like, if I have to act like them to have a girlfriend — I’m not down,’ he wrote.
Elsewhere in the Esquire interview, Kravitz opened up about his difficulties with infidelity over the years and his fears of committing.
He admitted that he struggled with ‘being confident that this is the person for me, always thinking something else may be better.’
Although he seemed to regret cheating in the past, he described it as ‘part of the journey.’
‘I put some people through some hard times,’ he added.
Although he’s currently single, Kravitz said he hasn’t ruled out having a wife and children one day.
‘I’ve grown enough. I’ve become stronger. I’ve become more disciplined,’ he said. ‘I’ve become more open to be able to do so. But it’s been a very difficult thing for me to figure out.’
His sole marriage was to the actress Lisa Bonet, whom he tied the knot in 1987.
The following year, they welcomed their daughter Zoë Kravitz, who followed her mother’s footsteps.
But Kravitz and Bonet separated in 1991, and the couple were amicably divorced in 1993 after starting up new relationships.
