Leah Messer’s Book Bombshells: Contemplating Suicide, Suffering Abuse and Starring on Teen Mom

In the third chapter, Leah accuses an unnamed babysitter of touching her “where no one should ever touch a child” when she was a kid.

“She would put on a movie and as soon as her mother left the room, she would kiss my neck and touch me where no one should ever touch a child,” she writes. “I didn’t like what she was doing. It felt wrong, but she was the only one in that house that was nice to us. I was afraid that if I told her to stop, she wouldn’t want to hang out and play games anymore. This went on for at least six months. Every morning, I’d beg my mom not to take me there. She’s get annoyed, so I’d cry my eyes out in the car the whole way. And then it would happen all over again.”

Leah claims she never told anyone what happened because she felt “ashamed” and like she had “done something wrong.”

“I stuffed the memory down so deep it was almost as if it never happened,” she writes. “Except that it did, and it became another loose stone in the foundation of my self-worth.”

 In chapter seven, Leah recalls her mom having a 16 & Pregnant viewing party.

“Nothing could have prepared me for the reality of being on a ‘reality’ television show,” she writes. “I remember sitting my mom’s living room, surrounded by people who had known me all my life and watching this version of myself on the show that I barely recognized. The whole time I just kept thinking, ‘It didn’t happen like that.'” 

Leah writes about reading “the most hateful and cruel comments from people” on social media after the episode aired.

“I laid in bed wide awake that whole night crying,” she later writes. “In the morning, I had to fly to New York City with my mom to film an after-show interview at the MTV studios in Times Square,” she writes. “It should have been such an exciting moment to meet all the other girls who had been on the show that season, but I barely remember any of it. I had never been to New York before, but instead of taking in the excitement and energy of the city, all I could think about was that I had ruined my whole life.”

In chapter eight, Leah recalls how her now-ex Corey Simms was “freaking out” after Ali was born.

“[The nurse] unwrapped the blanket, and that’s when I saw that her legs were stuck up over her head and her hands were hyperextended back towards her elbows,” she writes. “They had swaddled her twisted up like that because they didn’t want to force her limbs down before they were ready. The photos we took of her in the hospital are hard for me to look at even now. Then, they took them straight to the NICU and I wasn’t allowed to see them until the next morning at 6:00 a.m. I never even got to hold them. It was the worst feeling in the world to be separated from my babies like that.”

Leah continued to take Ali for tests after she didn’t reach major milestones. Ali was later diagnosed with muscular dystrophy.

In chapter eight, Leah also recalls cheating on Corey with her ex Robbie and claims MTV producers notified her of the breakup.

“I got a call from one of the producers who said she had talked to Corey and he had told her that we were splitting up because I cheated on him,” she writes. “I was taken aback that this was coming up now, even though we had agreed six months earlier to put it behind us, but she said it was still an important part of our story and Corey had already agreed to film about it. By that point, we were barely speaking, but Corey sent me a text that made me think that if I agreed to talk about what happened on camera he’d be willing to work things out. What bothers me about how it all played out isn’t that I got called out on the show for cheating on Corey, it’s that I felt like I had been manipulated into a situation where it looked like I had been lying to him about it and that’s why our marriage fell apart.”

Leah claims she didn’t know “what was going through Corey’s head” and that she still believes the two “might have been able to work through” their issues. However, she alleged “he started getting pressure from everyone around him” once they publicly discussed the cheating.

“We had parents involved, we had producers involved, we had an entire show involved and the next thing I knew he hired an attorney and we were filing for a divorce,” she writes in the memoir.

In chapter nine, Leah writes about her abortion. She claims her mom and publicist came up with a plan to make it seem like Leah was having a miscarriage. She writes that “it was the worst thing I had ever been through.”

In chapter 10, Leah writes about giving birth to her daughter Addie and how the Teen Mom star was prescribed pain medications after a botched spinal tap during labor. According to the book, Leah will watch moments on the show she doesn’t remember because she was taking pills at the time.

In chapter 11, Leah writes about being in a “dark place.”

“I was in such a dark place the only thought in my mind was that if I drove my car over the edge it would all be over, and everyone would be better off. Instead, I pulled over to the side of the road and cut the engine. I don’t know how long I sat there crying, but eventually, this feeling of calm washed over me and I knew I had to figure out how to get better for my daughters.”

She is now sober.