The Diary of a CEOTerry Crews Breaks Down About His Sexual Abuse & Beating Up His Dad!
CHAPTERS
- 2:00 – 9:00
Flint, Michigan: Growing Up in Violence and Religious Extremism
Crews describes his childhood in Flint at the height of General Motors’ success but inside a home marked by an alcoholic, abusive father and a hyper-religious, controlling mother. Constant domestic fights, physical violence, and church-dominated routines shaped him into a terrified people-pleaser who fantasized about becoming strong enough to protect or even kill his father.
- •Flint, Michigan in the late 1960s–70s was prosperous, but his household was chaotic and violent.
- •His father, a Buick foreman from rural Georgia, was an alcoholic who regularly beat his mother.
- •His mother’s strict holiness church banned movies, sports, and secular music, flooding the home with guilt and fear.
- •Terry wet the bed until age 14 due to constant nighttime fights and police visits.
- •He coped by becoming a pleaser, trying to keep both parents calm at any cost.
- •Early obsession with superheroes and muscles linked to a subconscious plan to one day stop or kill his father.
- 9:00 – 14:40
Discovering Art, Comedy, and the Power to Ease Pain
School and art became an escape from home, where Crews developed his imagination through drawing forbidden movies and copying comic-book heroes. He learned he could make his mother laugh even as she nursed injuries, realizing humor and performance gave him a sense of power amid chaos and reinforced his role as emotional caretaker.
- •A special art-focused school from 7th grade through senior year offered him sanctuary and opportunity.
- •His imagination was fueled indirectly by others’ stories of movies and music he wasn’t allowed to consume.
- •Comic books were one of the few acceptable outlets, feeding his fascination with muscular heroes.
- •He discovered he could make his injured mother laugh by dancing and clowning in front of her.
- •This reinforced a belief that his job was to “cool everything out” and fix others’ emotions.
- 14:40 – 26:10
Generational Trauma and Numbing: From Chain Gangs to Pornography
Through a genealogy TV show, Crews uncovers his father’s abandonment and the brutal chain-gang imprisonment of his grandfather, which helps explain but not excuse his father’s pain and alcoholism. He then parallels this with his own choice of pornography as a numbing mechanism, which began in childhood and was deliberately targeted at the young through accessible material.
- •He learns as an adult that his grandfather robbed a liquor store, was sentenced to a chain gang, and later died young after abandoning the family.
- •His father grew up visiting his dad in prison and passing his chain gang on the school bus, internalizing rejection and worthlessness.
- •Crews connects male conditioning to numb pain—his father via alcohol, himself via pornography.
- •He first encountered porn around age 9–10 in an uncle’s chest filled with magazines.
- •He argues people almost always discover porn as children, often unintentionally, not as consenting adults.
- •Magazines used cartoons and fairy-tale parodies to hook young viewers; for him, porn instantly removed awareness of violence and stress.
- 26:10 – 38:00
A Lifetime Porn Addiction and Its Impact on Marriage
Crews details how porn escalated into an addiction lasting from childhood into his 40s, including entire days lost to viewing. He explains the guilt–shame–reward cycle that kept him trapped and describes how marriage did not cure his behaviors; instead, he eventually crossed into physical infidelity and hid it for a decade, eroding trust and reality within his marriage.
- •He could binge porn from 10am to 11pm on days off, cycling endlessly through videos.
- •He differentiates addiction from casual use by loss of control and repeated relapse after vows to stop.
- •Guilt over using porn led to shame (“you are bad”), then overcompensation with good deeds, then a sense of deserving a “reward” that sent him back to porn.
- •He married in 1989 assuming porn would disappear once he had a “real woman,” but conflict or sexual refusal immediately drove him back to porn.
- •In 2000, he went to a massage parlor and received a sexual act, which he vowed never to reveal to anyone.
- •He decided his porn and cheating would be his secret, assuming “everyone” had similar secrets, and maintained this for 10 years.
- 38:00 – 54:20
D‑Day: Confession, Collapse, and the Beginning of Change
In 2010, during a phone call while he was filming in New York, Crews’ wife pressed him repeatedly about a missing piece in their relationship. He finally confessed the massage-parlor incident, expected her to leave, and initially blamed her. Alone afterward, he experienced a pivotal shift from rationalization to self-recognition—realizing the problem was him, not her—which led to therapy and a complete reevaluation of his life.
- •His wife sensed something was still hidden and refused to drop the subject, leading to his confession.
- •Her initial reaction was to say she was done and tell him not to come home.
- •Crews’ first internal response was egoic—believing Hollywood wouldn’t punish him and he could easily replace his family.
- •A sudden inner realization—“Maybe it’s me”—cracked his self-image and forced him to see his lies clearly.
- •He recognizes his wife had married a curated image, not the real Terry.
- •Therapy and 12 Step principles (especially the Serenity Prayer) helped him see he was trying to change what he couldn’t and feeling powerless over what he could.
- 54:20 – 1:01:00
Violence, Revenge, and the Futility of Beating His Father
Crews recounts the ‘Christmas from hell’ when his father punched his mother again in front of Crews’ children. He returned, cleared the house, and violently assaulted his father, believing this was long-awaited justice. Instead, he felt hollow, nothing improved, and his mother soon moved back, teaching him that revenge doesn’t heal or change abusive systems.
- •He had previously made his father promise never to repeat the violence, especially in front of his children.
- •After learning his kids had witnessed the assault, Crews turned the car around, removed them, and confronted his father physically.
- •He beat his father while crying, trying to make him feel how his mother had felt.
- •The act felt emotionally empty; it did not fix his mother’s injuries or change family dynamics.
- •His mother later moved back in, undermining his fantasy that revenge would bring resolution.
- •He concludes that true success lies in transcending cycles of abuse, not reciprocating them.
- 1:01:00 – 1:07:00
Redefining Toughness: Restraint, Will Smith, and the Power of Not Striking Back
Using his own evolution and the Will Smith–Chris Rock Oscars incident, Crews reframes toughness as the ability to maintain control rather than unleash violence. He contrasts his younger self—who would have struck back immediately—with the discipline Chris Rock showed by not retaliating, arguing that unchecked masculinity leads to chaos while true strength preserves order.
- •He admits that earlier in life he would have reacted like—or worse than—Will Smith in similar provocation.
- •He highlights Chris Rock’s restraint as the real act of strength that prevented total chaos on live television.
- •Crews connects this to his own experiences of being baited by racial slurs and physical affronts and how reacting used to be a rule he followed without thinking.
- •He notes that social rules in his community normalized violent responses (“anybody call you nigga, knock ’em out”), filling jails with men who followed that script.
- •Realizing “there are no niggas” allowed him to detach his identity from insults, reducing their power to control his behavior.
- 1:07:00 – 1:10:30
Therapy, Boundaries, and Becoming a Different Husband and Father
Crews walks through the painstaking work of therapy: learning to say no, dissecting triggers, and rebuilding his identity from a chronic pleaser into someone with boundaries. A small family moment—calmly responding when his son spills water—becomes the clearest sign of deep change, prompting his wife to affirm that he is truly different and rekindling their intimacy.
- •Therapy challenged his belief that he “had to” comply with every demand from directors, fans, and authority figures.
- •He practiced saying no, even to benign autograph requests, which initially left him shaking with anxiety.
- •He began constantly asking whether his emotional reactions were about him or others, loosening his reactivity.
- •Over time, his family noticed he wasn’t exploding over small mishaps, like a spilled drink.
- •His wife’s emotional recognition—“You’re different… I’m with you… I love you”—validated the years of hard work.
- •He emphasizes that change is measured in consistent, minor behavioral shifts, not grand gestures.
- 1:10:30 – 1:16:10
Accountability, Making Amends, and What Real Forgiveness Looks Like
Crews insists that apologies are insufficient without concrete actions to repair harm. He uses the metaphor of hitting someone with a car: you must stay, call for help, and take legal responsibility. Applying this to his family, he stayed present through the pain, did the therapeutic work, and accepted consequences, ultimately earning, rather than demanding, his wife’s forgiveness.
- •He rejects the cultural norm of “I said I’m sorry” as a full solution.
- •Making amends means staying with the person you hurt through their recovery, not disappearing.
- •He acknowledges deeply damaging his wife and children and views their restored relationship as proof of doing the work.
- •He believes that without this reckoning he likely wouldn’t be alive, and certainly wouldn’t be married.
- •He frames long-term Hollywood success as often disconnected from genuine love and intimacy.
- 1:16:10 – 1:23:50
Sexual Assault in Hollywood and Challenging Power Structures
Crews recounts being sexually assaulted by his powerful agent at a Hollywood party and the dismissive response from the agency’s leadership. He chose not to react violently in the moment, then later sued, spending significant personal funds to force accountability—eventually leading to the agent’s quiet ‘retirement’ and demonstrating how institutional protection enables abuse.
- •At a star-studded party, his agent grabbed his genitals twice in front of their wives; Crews physically pushed him away but did not retaliate further.
- •Years of prior violence and his wife’s insistence he leave violence behind helped him recognize this as a trap similar to being baited by slurs.
- •He argues if he had hit the agent, the narrative would likely have painted him as the aggressor and his story as unbelievable.
- •When he reported the assault, the agency head proposed only a title removal and 30-day suspension, revealing a double standard compared to Mel Gibson’s antisemitic remarks.
- •During the Me Too wave, Crews publicly spoke out, sued the agency, and others came forward with similar stories about the same agent.
- •He refused any damages beyond attorney fees; his aim was the agent’s removal, which was eventually achieved via ‘retirement.’
- 1:23:50 – 1:32:10
From Overachievement and Shame to Being “The Only”
Crews connects his extreme work ethic and late-life acting success to insecurity and shame rather than healthy ambition. Through therapy he reorients his self-worth, seeing himself as the same innocent boy he once was, and stops competing to be “the best,” instead focusing on being uniquely himself—“the only” Terry Crews.
- •His NFL career was driven less by talent than by an unusual capacity to absorb pain and grind endlessly.
- •As a broke ex-player in LA, he worked multiple low-status jobs, often simultaneously, using work as a way to avoid facing himself.
- •Therapy challenged the idea that he was fundamentally bad, leading him to keep a childhood photo of himself visible as a reminder of his original goodness.
- •He distinguishes guilt (corrective) from shame (corrosive) and aims to purge shame from his self-concept.
- •He observes that people use shame to manipulate (“I never do that”) and now refuses that game.
- •His mantra “Don’t try to be the best. Be the only” reduces comparison pressure and centers authenticity over competition.
- 1:32:10
Closing Reflections: Redefining Strength and Feeling Satiated
In closing, host Steven Bartlett praises Crews’ book ‘Tough’ for redefining strength in a culture that glorifies performative masculinity. Crews describes his mood as ‘satiated’—relieved to tell his story in full context, without social-media distortion—and emphasizes the importance of vulnerability so others don’t feel alone in their struggle.
- •Bartlett notes that Crews embodies physical strength on screen but now publicly redefines strength as emotional openness and accountability.
- •The book addresses both men and women affected by toxic behaviors rooted in unprocessed pain.
- •Crews likens the conversation to finally telling his story on his own terms, free from misinterpretation.
- •He sees sharing vulnerably as a responsibility so that other men know there is a way out of addiction, rage, and shame.
