Melissa Schuman on her rape allegations and why she sang a duet with Nick Carter

Singer Melissa Schuman reflects on her duet with Nick Carter after making disturbing allegations about her experiences with the Backstreet Boys singer.

In the new Investigation Discovery series Fallen idols: Nick and Aaron CarterSchuman, a former member of the girl group Dream, describes the aftermath of an incident in which Carter allegedly raped her in his Santa Monica home in 2003. Schuman says Carter contacted her the day after the encounter. “I got a text from Nick saying, ‘Why did you make me do this?’ And that text totally freaked me out,” she claims in the documentary. (Carter has denied Schuman’s allegations.)

Schuman says she had just left Dream and couldn’t risk the potential career consequences of legal action. “I confided in my manager that I was going to go to the police and report the crime,” she says. “And he was like, ‘You know, (Carter) has the most powerful trial lawyer in the country. We’re trying to build a name for ourselves right now, and this is going to destroy everything.’ I was in such a vulnerable position leaving that group, with no financial stability, that I thought, ‘Okay, that’s not a viable option for me.'”

The singer goes on to say that she avoided Carter for a long time after the alleged assault. “I was able to successfully avoid him for about a year and a half and started making music again – I tried to continue as a solo artist,” Schuman recalls. “And I signed with Kenneth Crear’s management company, only to find out later that Kenneth was like family to Nick. And so I remember Kenneth saying, ‘Nick recorded this song, it’s a duet, and you know he and I discussed it and we both agreed that you should sing this duet with him.'”

Schuman was concerned about the suggestion. “My first thought was, ‘Do I have to be alone with him?’ and Kenneth said, ‘Oh no, it’s already recorded. You just have to go in and do your part,'” she says. “I could feel Kenneth’s eyes on me, like he was watching me, and he said, ‘Nick is dating Paris Hilton.’ Why would he feel the need to say that? What did Nick tell him? And I also thought, ‘Well, he’ll leave me alone.'”

The singer later explains how she recorded the song “There for Me” with Carter, despite feeling “torn” about it, as she felt it was the right career move at the time. She says that after recording the duet, she had to play a showcase set for Sony Records executives, as they were considering signing her to their label – and that Crear said Carter would sing with her at the showcase.

Once again, Schuman felt she had to accept the offer to advance her career. “It was incredibly overwhelming,” she describes. “(It was) exactly what I thought I was avoiding, but I felt I had to do it because of the business opportunity. When the showcase happened, I froze, I froze, completely. I was scared and very cold to him. And we sang our duet. I don’t even think I looked at him. And at one point he said, ‘Well, we obviously don’t like each other.’ And those were the last words he ever said to me.”

The showcase didn’t have the impact on her career that she had hoped for. “After the showcase, weeks went by and then Kenneth finally said, ‘The label thinks your voice was weak. They don’t want anything to do with you. They just want to work with Nick and they’re not interested,'” she recalls. “I was 20 years old. And at that moment I knew, ‘This is it.’ I could hear it in his voice, this was it. I tried for a really long time, but there was just this part of me that was left behind a long time ago.”

Carter’s attorney Dale Hayes Jr. told EW: “These are the exact same outrageous allegations that led us to sue this band of conspirators. These cases are currently working their way through the legal system, and based on the initial court rulings and the overwhelming evidence, we are confident we will prevail and hold them accountable for spreading these falsehoods.”

Text at the end of the Fallen Idols The section states: “In court documents, Kenneth Crear disputes Melissa’s account of her duet with Nick. In addition, Melissa’s former manager denied that she told him about the alleged assault.”

Weekly entertainment could not reach Crear for comment.

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Schuman says she now sees the brief collaboration with Carter as a calculated move on his part. “When I look at that song now, it almost feels like it was deliberate. It was presented as if it was actually helping me, but in reality it feels more like an alibi for him,” she says.

Carter has repeatedly denied Schuman’s allegations since she first made them public in a 2017 blog post – and he has cited the duet as evidence that there were no ill feelings between them in the past. “I am shocked and saddened by Ms. Schuman’s allegations,” Carter said in a statement to PEOPLE in 2017. “Melissa never expressed to me that anything we did was not consensual while we were together or at any time afterward. We then recorded a song and performed together, and I have always been respectful of Melissa and supportive of her both personally and professionally.”

Los Angeles investigators declined to pursue Schuman’s case against Carter in 2018 because the statute of limitations had expired. However, Schuman filed a lawsuit against the Backstreet Boys in 2023 after a new California law extended the statute of limitations for sexual assault cases. Her lawsuit followed a separate lawsuit filed by Shannon “Shay” Ruth, who sued Carter in 2022 over an alleged incident in which the singer raped Ruth on a tour bus after a Backstreet Boys concert in Tacoma, Washington. Carter denied all allegations and filed countersuits against Ruth and Schuman.

Fallen idols: Nick and Aaron Carter Premiering over two nights on Monday, May 27 and Tuesday, May 28 from 9-11pm ET/PT on ID and streaming on Max. Watch the trailer above.