Music

NSYNC's Lance Bass was “inappropriately touched" by "someone we worked with"

by Jesse Locke

In a recent segment on sexual harassment in the entertainment industry for The Meredith Vieira Show, NSYNC’s Lance Bass opened up about his experiences. “When I was 16, 17 years old and we started, there was someone that we worked with that was inappropriately touching us.” said Bass. “I was even aware then, at 16, that this guy was a pedophile. He was touching me oddly.” Watch the clip below:

While he didn’t call out the perpetrator by name, Gawker notes that these stories share a lot in common with Bass’s past anecdotes about the group’s notorious manager, Lou Pearlman. In a 2014 interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Bass said Pearlman would “always grab our arms and feel our muscles and go: ‘Hey boys, you workin’ out? Yeahhhh!’” He added that these interactions never “crossed that line” with him personally, but that he had heard some scary rumours:

He would always have young boy limo drivers for Trans Continental Records; those limo drivers would always be put into different boy bands. Then I’d hear rumors that he would molest the boys before they would even get into the groups. I don’t know how much of that is true, but to me, where there’s smoke, there’s fire.

Alongside NSYNC, Pearlman also served as Svengali for 1990s boy bands such as the Backstreet Boys, O Town, LFO, and Take 5. He’s currently behind bars for a 25-year embezzlement sentence, and has been hit with similar harassment allegations from multiple clients, though no formal charges have been made. Read the 2007 Vanity Fair piece “Mad About the Boys” for an in-depth exploration on the topic.