Sum 41 frontman Deryck Whibley is alleging in a new memoir that he was groomed and sexually abused by the band’s former manager Greig Nori, when he was a teenager and Nori was in his 30s.
The claims, first reported in a feature by the Los Angeles Times, appear in Whibley’s book Walking Disaster: My Life Through Heaven and Hell. In it, Whibley writes that Nori kissed him without consent and instigated sexual encounters during Sum 41’s formative years in Ajax, Ont., and into the early 2000s.
Whibley never told his bandmates about the alleged abuse, and only confided in then-partner Avril Lavigne and his current wife Ariana Cooper, who helped him understand the relationship between himself and Nori as abusive. After years of reflection and learning about the MeToo movement, Whibley told the L.A. Times he realized he had been groomed.
“As excited as I am to share this open and honest memoir of my life story, I’m equally just as terrified,” a post on the Sum 41 Instagram page reads.
Nori, a musician from Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., denies the claims in the book as “false allegations.” He told the Globe and Mail that he has retained a defamation lawyer.
The allegations
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In Walking Disaster, Whibley describes meeting Nori for the first time when he snuck backstage at a Treble Charger concert when he was 16. At the time, Whibley was in high school trying to make his music dreams come true, and Nori, the frontman of Treble Charger, was his hero.
Whibley invited Nori to one of Sum 41’s upcoming performances, sparking a mentorship that would eventually grow into Nori managing the band.
One night when Whibley was 18, he and Nori were at a rave when the older musician asked Whibley to come to the bathroom to do ecstasy with him. Inside the bathroom stall, Whibley writes that Nori grabbed him and “passionately” kissed him.
Nori allegedly told the Sum 41 frontman that the pair shared a “special” connection and the relationship was worth exploring. Nori would have been around 36 years old at the time.
At the time, Whibley tried to brush off the encounter because Nori was a trusted figure in his life.
“It seemed like a cool experiment when I was high, but when I was sober, it felt wrong,” Whibley writes. “Greig kept pushing for things to happen when we were together. I started feeling like I was being pressured to do something against my will. It was a strange feeling because for the most part I trusted Greig completely and still thought he was a great human being, which made it all so confusing.”
Whibley writes that he tried numerous times to end the sexual aspect of their relationship, only to be accused of homophobia by Nori. The Treble Charger frontman allegedly told Whibley he “owed” him for helping to get Sum 41 off the ground.
In 2004, Whibley started dating Lavigne, a fellow Canadian pop-punk star, and he shared what had happened between him and Nori.
“That’s abuse! He sexually abused you,” Lavigne told Whibley, according to the memoir. Lavigne and Whibley split up in 2009 after three years of marriage. Whibley’s current wife, Ariana Cooper, had a similar reaction when he told her, he said.
Eventually, Whibley says Nori stopped trying to pressure him into sexual encounters after a mutual friend learned of the relationship and said it was abusive. In 2005, Sum 41 fired Nori as its manager.
As Whibley got older, eventually hitting the age that Nori was when they first met, the Sum 41 frontman began to better understand the power imbalance in their relationship.
“It all became so clear,” Whibley told the L.A. Times. “Then about a year later, the Me Too thing started happening. I started hearing stories of grooming, and it all started to make sense.”
In an interview with the Toronto Star, Whibley said he’s not worried about the potential legal fallout of the memoir.
“You can’t sue (someone) for telling the truth,” Whibley said. “If he wants to challenge it, I welcome that. Let’s go to court. Let’s go under oath. That would be f—king great! I welcome that part…. Finally, let’s get it on record!”
Sum 41 is currently touring its last-ever round of shows, and have booked Toronto’s Scotiabank Arena on Jan. 30, 2025 as their final stop.
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