First, just so we’re all working with the same information, the full quote from the Guardian piece,

He lost his virginity when he was eight years old, to a local girl who was 14 or 15. Seriously? “Yeah, really. Uh-huh.” He grins and chuckles. “It’s different in the country.” Brown grew up with a great gang of boy cousins, and they watched so much porn that he was raring to go. “By that point, we were already kind of like hot to trot, you know what I’m saying? Like, girls, we weren’t afraid to talk to them; I wasn’t afraid. So, at eight, being able to do it, it kind of preps you for the long run, so you can be a beast at it. You can be the best at it.”

Like most people with normal levels of human empathy, my stomach flipped when I read that quote. I didn’t want to believe it was true, that an 8-year-old boy who in no way, shape, or form can consent to sex was abused by a girl who was older, but also herself maybe too young to consent to sex, likely perpetuating something awful that had happened to her. This sort of thing must happen all the time, but confronting the reality of it is almost too fucked up to process. My brain wants so badly for it not to be true that it did that ugly confirmation bias denial thing, it tried to find ways that it wasn’t. I wanted it to be a brag. I wanted it to fit neatly in with the “Chris Brown is an asshole” narrative the media I consume spouts, that I’ve been complicit in spouting. Before I realized what I was doing, I’d questioned and blamed a victim of sex abuse.

More: Chris Brown Didn’t ‘Lose His Virginity’ at Age 8. He Was Raped.