Madison Beer felt “powerless” and struggled with post-traumatic stress disorder after several of her nude videos leaked online when she was 15 years old.
“I was so disturbed by it and so afraid. I felt so unsafe and just, like, scared,” the “Melodies” singer recalled on the “Call Her Daddy” podcast Wednesday.
“There were so many layers of peeling the onion of how that made me feel and … no one saying that it was wrong.”
Beer, now 24, explained to host Alex Cooper that she “vividly” remembers when a friend first texted her a NSFW video that she had sent to the boy she was seeing at the time, and then another friend sent her a second clip the next day.
“I knew in my bones that the second this was texted to me it would end up on the internet, unfortunately, and I couldn’t run from that fact,” she continued.
Before she knew it, the former YouTuber was at dance rehearsals when she saw one of her videos on Twitter.
“I was just looking at it, and I remember just dropping to the floor and being like, ‘Oh, my God, what do I do?'” she remembered. “I reached out to the person who posted it and begged them to delete it, and they just blocked me, straight-up just blocked me immediately.”
Beer eventually saw the video spread to “every social media platform” — including Vine, one of the most popular apps at the time.
“I think that some people that maybe haven’t gone through it, or men, don’t understand how truly traumatizing something like this can be, especially for a minor,” she shared.
The New York native compared the situation to an infamous 2010 video of Miley Cyrus smoking out of a bong but noted that hers was worse.
“It was so, so hard for so long, and I felt like the whole world had seen the video, and this is also the beginning of having real trigger-able PTSD from the situation,” she explained.
The “Selfish” songstress admitted that she chose not to press charges against the boy she sent the videos to because although he “betrayed [her] trust” by sharing them, she does not think he was “evil” or “malicious.”
Beer said she experienced “endless sexualization” at a young age, which she further explores in her upcoming memoir, “The Half of It.”
“At the time, I knew it was inappropriate,” she said on the podcast, “but I wasn’t as shocked and disgusted as I am now.”
