Kesha’s Mother Pebe Talks About The Alleged History Of Abuse Her Daughter Experienced With Dr. Luke

Robbie Daw | March 10, 2016 1:22 pm

Billboard has interviewed Kesha‘s mother Pebe Sebert over what is noted as being “several hours-long phone calls from Nashville,” where the 60-year-old songwriter lives. During the extremely lengthy but gripping read, Pebe gives many sordid details about her version of Kesha’s now-11-year history with producer Dr. Luke.

More:: Lady Gaga speaks about her support for her friend Kesha

One chunk of the writeup involves an October 5, 2005 birthday party for Nicky Hilt0n at sister Paris Hilton‘s house that Dr. Luke (real name: Lukasz Gottwald), who was 32 at the time, attended with his new artist Kesha, 18. Billboard reports what happened as follows:

Kesha was drinking. According to Kesha’s 2014 lawsuit, Luke raped her after giving her what he called “sober pills”: GHB, a drug commonly used in sexual assaults. This, the suit alleges, is what allowed him to “bring [her] back to his hotel room alone and rape her while she was unconscious.” The ­documents don’t specify a date, but according to Pebe, Luke drugged her at the Hiltons’ party and took her back to his hotel that night. An ­eyewitness at the party confirms to Billboard that both Luke and Kesha were there (although the source says, “I didn’t see anything weird” between the two of them).

By midafternoon the day after the party, Pebe had grown concerned after ­calling Kesha multiple times and getting no response. (On an average day, Pebe says, the two spoke by phone every six to eight hours.) Finally, her mother maintains, Kesha returned her call, saying she had woken up naked in what she believed was Dr. Luke’s hotel room. “Mom, I don’t know where I am. I think we had sex. I’m sore and sick. I don’t know where my clothes are. I think I need to go to the hospital,” she said. Then Kesha’s phone battery died. Pebe kept calling her daughter until Kesha called back from the hotel’s landline.

Pebe says that a friend of Kesha’s picked Kesha up and drove her back to her ­apartment. (Kesha never went to the hospital.) “At some point over the ­following few days I called my best friend and pored over the details,” Kesha recalls in the 2015 affidavit. “I had only had a few drinks but after I had taken this ‘sober pill’ I blacked out.” Says Pebe: “Looking back, I don’t know why we didn’t go to the police. Kesha told me not to do anything. She said, ‘Mom, I just want to sing. I don’t want to be a rape-case victim. I just want to get my music out.’ I didn’t follow my instincts.”

Further details seem confounding for those who, say, don’t have a drive to break into the music business. For instance, less than two months after the above alleged incident, according to Pebe’s account, Kesha and her mother were meeting with Dr. Luke and Max Martin over lunch in Beverly Hills to discuss who to pick as Kesha’s manager.

One anonymous manager who is said to have known Luke for 20 years, and has artists who’ve worked with the producer, tells Billboard, “Luke is a terrible person. He’s very talented, obviously — he’s a guitar player interested in pop beats — but he’s ­diabolical. No one likes dealing with the guy. He’ll do anything to fuck over everyone. This thing with Kesha is a perfect example. He could have let her out of the deal a year ago — her career was already on its downside — but he’s such an asshole he just wouldn’t do it.”

On the flip side, publicist Elizabeth Freund, who has known Luke since he was 11 years old, says to Billboard, “There’s not one speck of doubt in my mind that he didn’t commit these allegations. He’s a loving father and an incredibly generous family member. I’ve seen really good ­relationships with the people he has worked with for years. He’s strong, kind and a loving and utterly good man.”

There are many details to Pebe’s miserable version of what was Kesha’s working relationship with Luke, including the following:

In late August 2012, Luke and Kesha set to work on her second album, Warrior, in Luke’s Malibu studio. Pebe recalls that Luke would comment about how Kesha, who has spoken openly about her battles with bulimia, wasn’t fit enough. “He ­ridiculed my body and my weight to the point where I almost killed myself,” Kesha says in the 2015 affidavit. “He encouraged me to not eat — even when I was eight days with no solid food and skipping meals to work out two times a day.”

On one song, according to Pebe, Luke wanted her to sing a lyric that included the phrase “some fat bitches in the bar.” “She would never say something like that — not in a million years,” says a collaborator of Kesha’s who heard about the incident from her. “There’s no way Kesha would ever want to degrade a certain body type in a song.”

Kesha’s 2014 lawsuit states that Luke once “physically backed Kesha into a corner, where she was curled up in a ball, crying and fearing for her life.” Pebe says that Luke did this, shaking his fist and screaming at her, after Kesha refused to sing the “fat bitches” lyric. Kesha, ­according to the 2014 lawsuit, bolted out of the studio and ran barefoot down the Pacific Coast Highway, crying. She climbed up nearby mountains and hid so he wouldn’t be able to find her, then, says Pebe, called her manager to come pick her up.

Regardless of what happens if and when Sony and Dr. Luke part ways, says Billboard, Kesha’s contract with Luke, and obligation to RCA, will still stand. According to a prominent ­entertainment lawyer the publication reached out to, Kesha’s contract is ironclad.

Appearing to be an optimist, Kesha, Pebe tells Billboard, has been working on new music back home in Los Angeles, and has written 30 songs.

Catch the full feature on Kesha’s mother Pebe over at Billboard.

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