Sinéad O'Connor has written a fourth open letter to Miley Cyrus requesting that the US singer apologise for 'perpetuating abuse' against her in references to her mental health.
The spat between the singers started with Cyrus’s attempts to shed her wholesome Hannah Montana image with her now-notorious appearance at the VMA awards followed by the successful but explicit Wrecking Ball video.
Part of the video featured a close-up of Cyrus with a tear in her eye modelled on O’Connor’s video for Nothing Compares to You in 1990.
It was this analogy which prompted O’Connor to respond in the first open letter “in the spirit of motherliness and with love”.
She told Cyrus that’s she was in danger of being “pimped” out by thinking it was “cool to be naked and licking sledgehammers in your videos”.
“It is in fact the case that you will obscure your talent by allowing yourself to be pimped.”
Cyrus then responded by saying: “First there was Amanda Bynes, now there’s this,” Cyrus wrote referring to the former teenage actress Bynes who has had serious mental health issues.
She also reminded her followers on Twitter of O’Connor’s past by posting a picture of O’Connor tearing up a photo of the then pope, as well as a screenshot of her older tweets from 2012, when she had asked her followers to recommend a psychiatrist.
In her fourth open letter to Cyrus, O’Connor calls for an apology for herself and for Amanda Bynes “for having perpetuated abuse of both of us on the grounds that Amanda has had ‘mental health issues’ and that I experienced suicidal compulsion and was open about seeking help in order to save my life.”
O’Connor said that “this should also involve an apology to all sufferers of mental health difficulties and all those who have had experience of suicidal feelings or who have been affected by suicide”.
O’Connor also adds that suicide is the third highest cause of death for those in 15 and 19 years of age range.
O’Connor signs off by saying she is not feuding with Cyrus but that she and her children have suffered serious harm and she calls on the US singer to “do the right thing”.
