Cyntoia Brown Talks Life In Prison, Release, and Faith; Opens Up About Love Life and Marriage in New Interview

Cyntoia Brown-Long feels really blessed to have an opportunity at freedom and is opening up about her life in a memoir called “Free Cyntoia.”

Brown, who was granted clemency earlier this year after serving 15 years of a life sentence for killing a man,  visited Power 105.1’s “The Breakfast Club” to talk about her journey.

She said she got involved with the juvenile justice system at the age of 12, and after being locked up in state custody, became a runaway who hung out with a much older, dangerous crowd, living in the streets of Nashville.

At age 16, Brown said she ended up with a man she thought was her boyfriend, but was really nothing more than her pimp involving her in the world of sex trafficking. She was then arrested and charged, and served 15 years for the murder of Johnny Mitchell Allen, a man who solicited her for sex when she was a teenager.

Brown talked about the experience of spending two years in solitary confinement in an adult prison because she was still a juvenile. Brown also credits focusing on education and religion as the things that helped her get through her ordeal.

Brown, who was adopted, shared that self-esteem issues led her down the wrong path, thanks to what she called “trauma bonds.” She also said that even though she was always raised in church, she initially found it difficult to believe there was a God.

Elsewhere, Brown talked about her husband, whom she met after he wrote her in prison. His letters stood out to her because of the burnt edges of the paper and what she described as her husband’s “goodness” that shined through his thoughtful words.

“Whenever he talked about all these accomplishments he always cast it back on God, he said it was because I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me,” she said. 

J. Long shared that he felt compelled to write her after seeing the documentary about her life on Youtube.

On August 7th, shortly before her release from prison, the couple married. Long said what gets misconstrued the most about their relationship is that it they just started dating, when in fact, the couple have been together for three years.

Long said his previous marriage to Pam from the R & B Group “Total” was a case of “marrying the wrong woman but with the right intentions,” as he called his ex-wife “warning” to Cyntoia “very selfish” and an attempt to “discredit what his wife is trying to do by trying to attach her name to something like this.”

As the interview continued, Brown also explained her need to apologize to Allen’s family for their pain but understands if his family is not ever ready to forgive.

“We can’t tell anybody how to grieve.  I can’t tell them what their (grieving) process should be. They may feel that it’s best that they never want to see me; they never want to talk to me. Like, that’s their decision. I would never push that on them.”