*Cyntoia Brown was granted clemency and released from prison after spending more than a decade jailed for killing Johnny Mitchell Allen, a man she says bought her for sex when she was 16.
In her first interview since being released, Brown said it’s “an honor to actually be the picture of what rehabilitation looks like, of what it looks like when we do give people a second chance.”
In January, then Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam announced Brown had been granted clemency after “careful consideration of what is a tragic and complex case.”
“It was like the most amazing feeling, it was kind of like I could just breathe,” Brown told NBC’s Lester Holt, (via CNN). “I could just exhale.”
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EXCLUSIVE: The average 16-year-old spends her days obsessing over pimples. Not Cyntoia Brown. At 16, she was wearing a prison jumpsuit. Now, having returned to the outside world after spending half of her life in jail, Brown is still finding her way. https://t.co/tMY7F8BnjX pic.twitter.com/tr99FOGJs9
— ESSENCE (@Essence) October 15, 2019
“The way they feel is completely understandable,” Brown said during an exclusive interview with TODAY show. “I don’t think that we can tell someone how to feel when they’ve been through something like that … They lost a loved-one and I took that person from them. Of course, I would tell them that I apologize. If they would ever want an opportunity to speak with me, I’d be more than happy to.”
Brown is in the midst of promoting her new memoir, “Free Cyntoia: My Search for Redemption in the American Prison System,” in which she opens about her journey toward rehabilitation. Brown found writing the book to be quite therapeutic.
“It was helpful because everything has happened over the course of 15 years. So I had come to a place where I was like, OK, I’ve healed from this, I’ve come to a point where I understand things differently—I really dug into it,” she explained. “And then when I put it on paper, it had to take me back to those moments. And I was, like, ‘Wow, I didn’t know I was still dealing with this.'”
You can see Brown’s TODAY interview via the YouTube clip above. Her memoir is available now.
WATCH:
“I took that person from them. Of course I would tell them that I apologize. If they would ever want an opportunity to speak with me, I’d be more than happy to.” Cyntoia Brown-Long shares her message to the family of Johnny Allen, the man she killed pic.twitter.com/Pyx1kKGQDz
— TODAY (@TODAYshow) October 15, 2019
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