Following the death of former Stone Temple Pilots frontman Scott Weiland, his ex-wife and the mother of his two children, Mary Forsberg Weiland, wrote a heartfelt, but brutally honest letter exposing the rock star’s failures as a father.
“December 3rd, 2015 is not the day Scott Weiland died,” Mary began in her letter published by Rolling Stone. “It is the official day the public will use to mourn him, and it was the last day he could be propped up in front of a microphone for the financial benefit or enjoyment of others.”
Mary also thanked fans for the outpouring of support for both herself and her and Scott’s children, Noah and Lucy. “But the truth is, like so many other kids, they lost their father years ago,” she wrote. “What they truly lost on December 3rd was hope.”
She continued by saying that while many were aware of Scott’s vocal talents, few knew what he was really like offstage.
“In reality, what you didn’t want to acknowledge was a paranoid man who couldn’t remember his own lyrics and who was only photographed with his children a handful of times in 15 years of fatherhood,” she wrote.
Mary claims she would do everything she could to keep Scott sober and get him to attend school events for his children, but with sometimes disastrous results.
“Spending so many years immersed in Scott’s multiple illnesses led to my own depression; at one point, I was misdiagnosed as bipolar. I feared the same would happen to the children,” she wrote. “There were times that Child Protective Services did not allow him to to be alone with them.”
Also according to Mary, Scott only grew more and more distant from his children as time went on, and that they were not invited when he re-married, nor have they ever set foot in his new home.
“Our hope for Scott has died, but there is still hope for others,” she concluded. “Let’s choose to make this the first time we don’t glorify this tragedy with talk of rock and roll and the demons that, by the way, don’t have to come with it. Skip the depressing T-shirt with 1967-2015 on it – use the money to take a kid to a ballgame or out for ice cream.”