Lauryn Hill Responds to Daughter’s Claim She Was ‘Angry’ and ‘Beat Like a Slave’

*Lauryn Hill posted a lengthy response on Facebook Thursday, addressing claims by her daughter Selah Marley that she was beat like a “slave” as a child at the hands of her mother.

“Selah has every right to express herself, I encourage it, but she also got the discipline that black children get because we are held to a different standard,” Hill wrote. “The discipline was seen through the lens of a young child who also had no place to reconcile me as mom, and me as a larger than life public figure. It took me a while to realize that my children, and probably everyone who knew me saw me in this duality. To me, I am just me. If I am guilty of anything it is disciplining in anger, not in disciplining.”

Selah, 21, criticized her parents in a Instagram Live stream on Monday (August 10), during which she opened up about the “trauma” she endured as a child with her “angry” mother and daddy issues. At one point, she tells fans that she would Google what it was like to have a father.

“Honestly guys, I’m just hurting. I can’t even front that I’m not,” she said. “I’ve been hurting for so much of my life and so much of my life has been me avoiding how much I’m really hurting just from the circumstances.”

Selah described her mother as being “very angry” during her childhood and said her father, Rohan Marley (son of Bob Marley) was never around.

Selah followed up with an Instagram Live chat on Aug. 11, in which she defended her parents from critics.

“My mother is a human, she’s not a perfect person but I’m not going to feed off all the negativity,” she said. “In the past 10 years she’s healed so much and I’ve watched her evolve and the same thing with my father. I mean he did some BS lately but my father, he’s healing as well. I came on and saw how the media misconstrued what I said, that is why I came on live it was a one dimensional narrative.”

She also explained that she’s now very close with her mom.

“Me and my mother are very close. She’s texting me as we speak,” she said. “Anger is a secondary emotion for sadness. I think for me growing up, remember I grew up with all brothers, so I’m like we’re fighting, we are fighting so I just learned how to be tough, I was always tough. So now coming back I’m learning how to cry again. Learning how to forgive is a big one, learning how to love, learning how to not be angry. And what I’m even learning now is how many walls I put up.”

Lauryn and Rohan dated from 1996 until 2008 and have five kids together.