[Warning: Potentially Triggering Content]
FKA twigs won’t stop telling her story.
The artist came forward with her accusations of abuse against her ex Shia LaBeouf for multiple reasons. Of course, seeking justice and making sure he wouldn’t be able to hurt anyone else was part of it. But she also wanted to bring attention to the signs of abuse during a time — the coronavirus lockdown — when those experiencing Intimate Partner Violence are more vulnerable than ever.
Related: Shia Denies ‘Each And Every’ Sexual Battery & Abuse Allegation In New Court Docs
She explained to Gayle King on CBS This Morning:
“[It’s] very subtle. That’s the thing about domestic abuse, domestic violence, that it’s a real gradual step-by-step process to get somebody to a place where they lose themselves so much that they accept or feel like they deserve to be treated in that way. It’s not one thing, it’s loads of tiny little things that get sewn together into a nightmare.”
In an interview with Elle, she admitted:
“It’s a miracle I came out alive.”
As for how she did escape, the British artist reflected:
“I think it’s luck. I honestly wish I could say that I found some strength and I saw this light. I wish I could say, ‘[It is] a testament to my strong character,’ or ‘It’s the way my mother raised me.’ It’s none of that. It’s pure luck that I’m not in that situation anymore.”
She added:
“People wouldn’t think that it would happen to a woman like me. The biggest misconception is, ‘Well, you’re smart. If it was that bad, why didn’t you leave?’ It can happen to anyone.”
Elsewhere in the interview, twigs shared:
“What I went through with my abuser is, hands down, the worst thing [I’ve experienced] in the whole of my life. Recovering has been the hardest thing I’ve ever tried to do.”
Check out her CBS interview below, and read on for more details about her experience with LaBeouf:
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The Infamous Driving Incident
Twigs (real name Tahliah Debrett Barnett) detailed specific instances of the abuse in her lawsuit against the Disney alum, which where originally published by the New York Times. This included an incident in which Shia began driving dangerously, demanding his girlfriend profess his love for him. He later stopped, threw her against the car when she tried to get away, and choked her at a gas station.
The Cellophane singer described to Elle her thought process as she was trapped in the car:
“I was thinking to myself, ‘I wonder what would happen to my body…if [we] smashed into a wall at 80 miles per hour?’ I was looking for the airbag and I couldn’t see the airbag sign, so I was thinking, ‘If he doesn’t have an airbag, will this car crush my sternum?’ … I was thinking, ‘Oh no, if I crouch like that, and the front of the car crashes into my head, will it snap my neck?’ … ‘Do I jump out of the car at 80 miles an hour?'”
Early Stages & Lovebombing
As we mentioned, educating others on the signs of an abusive relationship is one of twigs’s main goals. She told Elle:
“When I look at what happened with [LaBeouf], I think now the most frustrating thing is…a lot of the tactics the abuser will use are things that if I would’ve known, I could have spotted in the first month of my relationship.”
One of those is “lovebombing,” and she has previously depicted Shia as an expert at the tactic. She remembered a specific example:
“He would send me between 10 and 20 bunches of flowers a day for 10 days. Every time I would sit down to work or watch something, the doorbell would ring, and it would be another three bunches of flowers. On the tag, each time, it would say, ‘More love,’ ‘More love,’ ‘More love.’ … It was a bit too much. It felt uncomfortable. I look back now, and it feels like really aggressive love.”
Abuse Escalation
The couple moved in together in October 2018 after Shia convinced twigs to relocate from London to LA. While there were warning signs in the relationship — and in the actor’s history of alcoholism and run-ins with the law — she wanted to be “sensitive to his recovery.” That perspective changed when they began cohabitating:
“After I moved into his house, that’s when the abuse really escalated. I realized then I wasn’t just dealing with a tortured person who was going through a divorce. Or that outside factors in his life [were] making him act out on me. I was involved with an inherently abusive person.”
As she had previously revealed, sleep deprivation was one of the abusive tactics used against her; Shia would wake her in the night and accuse her of perceived slights, force her to sleep naked, and compare her actions to his ex. He would also force her to watch disturbing true crime documentaries depicting violence against women before they went to sleep. She recounted:
“I would say to him, ‘I really don’t want to watch stuff like this before I go to bed. I’m sensitive, it affects me.’ It was so dark, and I was just like, ‘I can’t be totally immersed in this all the time.’ I was very intimidated living with him. He had a gun by the side of the bed and was erratic. [I never knew what would] make him angry with me.”
He would also tell her about shooting stray dogs in the neighborhood to prepare for his role in The Tax Collector. She responded:
“That’s really bad. Why are you doing that?’ And he was like, ‘Because I take my art seriously. You’re not supporting me in my art. This is what I do. It’s different from singing. I don’t just get up on a stage and do a few moves. I’m in the character.’ He made me feel bad, like I didn’t understand what it was like to be an actor or to do this…Method [acting technique].”
The 33-year-old’s lawsuit included his gun ownership, mentioning that he slept with the weapon. Twigs feared getting up at night lest he might think she was an intruder and shoot her; she told Elle that she once sent her manager a photo of the gun as potential evidence:
“I thought to myself, ‘If he shoots me, and then if there is some sort of investigation, they will put the pieces together. I need to leave little clues.'”
Related: Shia Steps Away From Acting & Checks Into Inpatient Treatment Amid Lawsuit
Isolation
Isolation from loved ones is another common abuser tactic, and one that twigs has described before. But it wasn’t always explicit instruction from Shia that caused it — sometimes it was her own shame. She would reach out to friends for help, and then ghost them when she lost her nerve. Once, she said:
“[My friend] was expecting me to be at his house when he got back and I just wasn’t, and then I never spoke to him again. I used to get this feeling of intense fear and shame, and I would evaporate from people’s lives.”
But Shia’s direct intervention was just as much an issue. She shared:
“One time, he heard me laughing on FaceTime with my friend. He came in and had a massive argument with me because he said he doesn’t make me laugh like that. So then I had to hide laughing with my friends. It’s [about] isolation, so I don’t talk to my friends. He hated that I had an experience to myself [with] something that didn’t involve him, a memory that gave me joy. He made me feel like I wasn’t allowed joy, basically. That’s what it boils down to: I wasn’t allowed joy unless it directly revolved around him.”
Even strangers were perceived as a threat, with the Transformers star demanding she not make eye contact with waiters during a vacation to Jamaica, where her grandparents still live. She remembered trying to reason with him:
“‘You don’t understand. I’m Jamaican. These are my people. I’ve been here many times before. I’m just trying to be nice.’ Now I realize that this is how an abuser tests your boundaries. Can he get me to look at the ground in my own island where I’m from? Yeah, he could. If he can get me to do that, how far can it go?”
Shia’s Enablers
Perhaps most damningly, twigs alluded in her Elle interview to those in Shia’s inner circle who knew about the abuse and did nothing. This came to a boil when they premiered their film Honey Boy at Sundance in January 2019. She stated:
“I’m not here to throw people under the bus, but I’d be lying if I didn’t say that there [were] people who were very close to him who knew exactly what was going on. … There [were] people who have worked with Shia that I openly spoke to about the abuse that I was going through. The reaction that I got [from his team] was pretty much, ‘Okay. Well, it’s Sundance.'”
She added:
“Of course, it’s such an honor for me to be asked to be in a film or sing a song. I love what I do, and [filming Honey Boy] was an incredible experience. But then I ended up being preyed upon. At what point does Hollywood stop looking at money and start looking at people’s safety? … I was genuinely made to feel that Honey Boy was more important than my physical and emotional well-being.”
A New Life Of Freedom
Thankfully, after multiple attempts at escape (the tour for her album Magdalene gave her the distance she needed to cut ties for good), twigs is now free of her abuser. Even more impressive, she’s now in a place of strength and stability to be able to talk about her experiences.
The difference in her life is clear in the making of her next album, which will feature a collab with Dua Lipa. She reflected:
“To be able to hit up Dua Lipa on Instagram, make a song with her, perform on her livestream, and have a new friend…and there’s no anxiety behind it. No fear of, like, ‘What is this going to cause for me? What trouble am I going to be in?'”
The artist also reiterated:
“It’s hard to do this publicly…but I want people to know my story. If I can’t help people through my experience, it makes my experience 10 times worse. There has to be a point to this—a reason why this happened to me. It’s not just about my [personal] recovery.”
Twigs concluded:
“It’s very fresh, for me, obviously. I know [this journey] is not going to be perfect. But I hope if I can make little steps, and people can see me taking my life back, it will inspire them. I’ve given [LaBeouf] back his dysfunction now. I went on my whole Magdalene tour holding that dysfunction—it was with me onstage, every time I did an interview, on every red carpet. I was not enjoying any of it. Because I was still holding it. But now I’ve given it back. Now he gets to hold it. And everyone knows what he’s done.”
Wow. Every new detail of this relationship is hard to hear, but we’re so glad twigs survived to tell her story. We hope these accounts are truly helping to educate others, and possibly help those in similar situations.
[Image via Mario Mitsis/WENN/Avalon]
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