Pattie Mallette, Justin Bieber's Mom, Writes Of Painful Past

NEW YORK — Pattie Mallette was 18, living in a home for pregnant girls after years of unrelenting sex abuse and depression when she gave birth to a boy she thought she'd name Jesse, a boy whose first cry sounded like a song.

Well, the baby seemed more like a Justin after he popped out. And his last name isn't Mallette.

It's Bieber.

You'd have to be firmly under a rock not to know at least a little bit about Justin Bieber's YouTube-to-riches story, his loyal fan base of Beliebers, 28 million Twitter followers or the hordes of screaming girls who pack his tours.

What you probably don't know are his mother's struggles, starting with the painful divorce of her parents, through years of emotional turmoil and hard partying that made school a blur, and her eventual turn to God after a suicide attempt about six months before Justin was conceived.

Mallette, 37, has laid bare her past in a new book, "Nowhere but Up: The story of Justin Bieber's Mom," out recently from the inspirational publisher Revell. It's a powerful, plainspoken story, written in collaboration with A.J. Gregory, a mother herself. A portion of proceeds have been promised to shelters like the one that harbored Mallette in Canada when her mother kicked her out of the house after she got pregnant.

Her troubles began well before that, however, and Mallette has forgotten little.

"Writing the book was part of my healing process," she said in an interview. "Just having to relive things as I'm writing it down. There are parts that are still painful to go over."

She was 2 when she watched her alcoholic, abusive father walk out the door and about 3 when she was first sexually abused by someone she knew. Mallette doesn't identify her numerous molesters, including a male baby sitter and the grandfather of a friend, but the last words of her book's acknowledgments speak volumes. "To my abusers: I forgive you."