As critics, and the streets, call for actor Christian Keyes to file a police report or reveal the name of the “billionaire” Hollywood mogul he alleges sexually harassed him, the actor has returned to social media to seemingly respond.
On Wednesday, Dec. 20, Keyes posted video from a previous interview he did with Atlanta Black Star, about being physically and mentally abused as a child by his first adoptive mother.
The All the Queen’s Men star included a lengthy caption explaining why he was sharing the clip.
“Maybe it’ll be a little easier to understand why it was difficult to speak up about it, difficult to find the courage. These powerful people target people with traumatic childhoods, and use that to bond with them and earn their trust, then they try their ‘attempts,'” he wrote. “Once you go through anything like I went through for years as a kid, this new trauma can almost make you shut down again.”
“I’m not going to respond to the ignorant or negative comments that have been made,” he added in the caption.
Related Story: Actor Christian Keyes Says He Was Sexually Harassed by ‘Billionaire’ Hollywood Mogul
In the video interview, the 48-year-old Detroit native recalled growing up in the foster care system, and said the first woman to adopt him was a monster.
“Mrs. Keyes was incredibly abusive, I mean, bat, hammer, broomstick, saucepan, bottle. When a belt wasn’t as effective as she wanted, when it didn’t make us scream loud enough, she would hold the other side and beat us with the belt buckle,” he said. “It gets worse, but it was that kind of environment between [ages] eight and 12. At nine, I started running away. By 10, I was pretty good, by 11, I was a professional runaway.”
That actor said while he was homeless, he would dig through the trash outside businesses looking for scraps of food.
Over the past week, Keyes has been the subject of intense debate on the internet after he said he was sexually harassed “for years” by a Hollywood mogul.
The actor did not name the alleged “predator” during his hour-long Instagram Live on Dec. 15, but said he secretly recorded some of his conversations with the man. Keyes held up an image of a pen camera and said he used hidden recording devices to protect himself.
“I’ve kept one of these on me since ’05, whether it’s a keychain recorder or a pen, because most predators will check your phone,” he said. “Once the sexual harassment started, I was like, I gotta protect me, because I don’t want this person, as powerful as they are, to try and get in the way of my work,” he said.
The actor alleged the mogul offered him $100,000 to strip.
“I wasn’t working for him [at the time]. He showed up to my apartment and offered me $100,000 to take my clothes off. He said, ‘I don’t need to touch you, I just want to see you naked,’” Keyes said, adding that he declined the man’s proposition. The actor said the man had visited his home under the pretense of offering him a role.
Keyes noted that the man has a voice the public would easily recognize. The actor said he’s considering going to the police and regrets not taking action years ago to prevent others from being harassed.
According to his IMDb page, Keyes made his feature film acting debut in 2005, in Tyler Perry’s Diary of a Mad Black Woman. He’s also appeared in Perry’s stage plays and had recurring TV roles on Let’s Stay Together, Supernatural, In Contempt, The Family Business, DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, The Young and the Restless, 9-1-1, Saints & Sinners, and All Rise.
The actor said in his Instagram Live that he’s encountered other sexual predators in Hollywood, including a woman and a second man he described as “a Black billionaire businessman.”
Keyes told his followers the second man wore silk pajamas to a business meeting about investing in the actor’s company, and suggested that Keyes would have to perform sexual favors in order to obtain financial backing.
The actor described the second alleged predator as a man known to the public for “paying tuition for entire classes of HBCUs.”
Watch the interview above that Christian Keyes did about his childhood.
