Did Pattie Mallette, who became pregnant with Justin Bieber at 17, say it was a result of rape? No, that's not true: While being a survivor of sexual abuse, she does not categorize the moment she conceived her son as rape in her memoir.
The claim appeared in a post on Facebook on April 11, 2023. It said:
She was raped when she was 17 and refused to have an abortion: 28 years later, her son is the world's most famous star - you won't believe who he grew up to be. Check the comments
This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Wed Apr 12 15:32:41 2023 UTC)
The article (archived here) listed in the first comment cites Mallette's autobiography, "Nowhere But Up: The Story of Justin Bieber's Mom." But the piece does not explicitly say that her pregnancy resulted from rape.
In her book, Mallette writes that she was first abused at age 3 and that it continued for years. At 15 she lost her virginity from what she described as date rape by a person named Joey who was not her son's father, she writes on page 55 of the book. That rape was two years before Mallette became pregnant with Justin Bieber.
Four pages later, she discusses a scene of a robbery at gunpoint when she worked as an overnight cashier at a gas station as a teenager. She remembers she asked herself whether she and her female co-worker would be killed or raped. While scary, the robbery ended quickly, and the women were not physically hurt.
On page 87, Mallette writes about the events preceding her pregnancy:
I drank more, I smoked more, and as the final straw, I reunited with Jeremy. I hung out with him and his friends on his birthday. He had one wish - me. I said yes.
Two weeks later, I was at the gynecologist's office.
The doctor snapped off his latex gloves, whipped them into a nearby trash can, and without missing a beat said, 'Any chance you could be pregnant?'
The book never refers to this episode as rape.
On page 90, she continues:
During my pregnancy, I was strongly advised to abort the baby, but I refused. I was shocked by the amount of pressure I was getting to take that route. I had to fight for my right to keep the baby. Abortion wasn't an option I even considered. My decision was ironic, considering that when I was on the high school debate team, I made many convincing arguments for a woman's right to choose. The only other alternative to keeping the baby was adoption, but I don't think I would have emotionally survived that decision. I wanted my baby.
At 37, Mallette became an executive producer of the 2011 short film "Crescendo," which was used to raise money for the pro-life movement. While promoting the anti-abortion cause, she repeated that she became the mother of Justin Bieber, but not that his birth resulted from rape.
Lead Stories has previously debunked claims that Bieber spoke out against pedophilia and abuse in Hollywood and that he said the COVID-19 vaccine ruined his life.
