The early 2000s were filled with boy bands and equally spirited girl groups in a time mixing innocence with budding sexuality. The industry was small and much different from what listeners expected, Melissa Schuman, of the girl group Dream, explained to The Daily Beast Thursday.
Schuman accused Backstreet Boys member, Nick Carter, of rape in November via a blog post. The alleged incident happened in 2002 when Schuman and Carter were hanging out with a group of friends in Carter's apartment. The pair was shooting a movie, The Hollow. Schuman disclosed that at the time of the alleged assault Carter was 22. She was 18.
"I think in some ways, as soon as I turned 18, it was almost like the vultures came out," Schuman told The Daily Beast. "Because all of a sudden I was legal. And I wasn't prepared for that. I was completely naive. Looking back, I feel sorry for my 18-year-old self."
In the aftermath of the alleged assault, Schuman explained Carter may have single-handedly ended her career.
Schuman told some people she felt uncomfortable working with Carter but continued to do so. She told her manager about the alleged incident but was told the movie would need to halt production if she came forward.
"It's like, God, do I want to do that? Do I want to shut down production and then everybody in production is going to know, and then you're dealing with the added trauma of that?" Schuman said. "I walked away feeling like the smartest thing to do was to do nothing. Not only was I assaulted, I was now at risk of that experience completely destroying my dreams. What do you do in that situation?"
Schuman was unable to avoid Carter even after filming ended. In the pop world, which she considered small, Schuman signed to the same manager as Carter. She assumed she wouldn't see him often but the pair ended up recording a duet together.
"I couldn't tell my manager that his best friend had raped me so I won't record this song. I tried to justify that maybe something good to come out of something very bad," she wrote in her November blog post. "Maybe this song might help me get signed as a solo artist and I could move on and put everything behind me."
Once the song was recorded, Schuman didn't hear from her manager again. Schuman couldn't be sure Carter had sabotaged her career but she was not blind to the idea.
"It was a question that I still have. I could be wrong, but my gut at the time—I suspected that" she said. "It was just a complete 180 from the manager. My music career never recovered from that."
Carter denied Schuman's rape allegations in November. "Melissa never expressed to me while we were together or at any time since that anything we did was not consensual," Carter said in a statement to CNN. "We went on to record a song and perform together, and I was always respectful and supportive of Melissa both personally and professionally."
The Backstreet Boys singer did not immediately respond to Newsweek's request for comment.
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