Nine months before her bombshell lawsuit accused super-producer Dr. Luke of date rape and other heinous acts, Kesha opened up about being abused in letters to fans discovered by BuzzFeed News.
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Long known as pop music's beglittered and giddily irreverent party girl, Kesha stunned many in the music world with allegations in a lawsuit filed earlier this week that she had been raped and physically abused by Dr. Luke, the super-producer and mogul who shepherded her career beginning when she was still in high school. But not everyone was surprised by the news. Annie Gallo, an 18-year-old college student from Virginia, is one of a handful of individuals who learned of Luke's allegedly abusive tendencies as early as January of this year, in a letter from Kesha herself.
Gallo's letter, written by Kesha during her well-publicized stint in rehab for an eating disorder, goes beyond accusing Dr. Luke of spurring on the disorder — he allegedly said she "looked like a refrigerator" — to refer to untold other sins she won't allow herself to name.
"Dr. Luke has tortured me & my family… he did do what people know about + SO much more terrible shit," Kesha writes.
In another letter, this one to Kelly Mullin, a 16-year-old fan also from Virginia, Kesha references "someone [she] work[s] with" who had become a tormentor and the source of her anguish. "Someone I work with has literally driven me into this disease, tortured me and fucked with me and my family."
BuzzFeed News discovered five such letters on social media, all apparently written while Kesha was in rehab, and confirmed the authenticity of three of them with recipients who agreed to be interviewed. All of the letters reference pain and suffering caused by someone in Kesha's inner circle, with two of them, including Gallo's, referring to Dr. Luke by name. See the letters below along with a sample of Kesha's handwriting shared with iHeartRadio in 2013.
Annie Gallo
