ROANOKE, Va. – Social media influencers often have millions of followers, and that’s certainly the case for Steven King. With nearly 7 million followers on TikTok, most of them are unaware of his dark past and the years it took him to heal from childhood trauma.
In a candid conversation, King opened up about his parents’ decision to place him in the foster care system at just 12-years-old.
His videos are filled with smiles, joy, and positivity, but beneath the surface lies the heartbreak of his childhood. “Being a child, the only thing that I ever wanted was to be loved,” King shared. “I wanted to be at home with my sisters who got to live at home, but I couldn’t.”
King’s life was far from easy. His parents divorced when he was three-years-old, and he struggled with his identity, leading to behavioral issues from an early age. He recalled a time when his mother feared he would grow up to be a serial murderer, and told him that when he was growing up. “As a child, I had a lot of behavioral issues, getting into trouble with the law and not attending school,” he said. “There was a time that I was on the sidewalk outside of whatever apartment complex that we lived in and a pregnant woman walked by me. I had a popsicle stick that I had sharpened on the sidewalk. I looked up at her and said, I’m going to carve your baby out.’”
His mother was an alcoholic and lived on welfare. King says his father was abusive and the most traumatic times in his childhood came in middle school.
“There were times that I can remember getting in trouble and being sent to my room and having to wait for my father to get home. It was either the belt that had the metal balls that went across it or it was a very large, hollow piece of rubber tubing that I would feel the wrath of.”
King also recounted an incident where his father dragged him by his hair and threw him against a garage door with his hands around his neck. “It was the first time I ever fought back, ripping his glasses off of his face. The neighborhood took notice of what was going on at this time too” he said.
As a child, King also stole money from local laundromats and a gas station. His parents tried what they knew to help-- sent him to live with his grandmother, therapy, and even put him in the hospital to be evaluated.
“It ultimately ended up in front of the courts because they had no other alternatives. I think that they had exhausted every viable alternative that they could think of that was at their means,” he said.
King’s behavioral issues eventually led his parents to petition the courts in California to take custody of him. “I began a life in the juvenile system for the state of California,” he explained. At just 12-years-old, King found himself in handcuffs and taken to Sylmar Juvenile Hall, where he was locked in a cell.
He spent the next few years bouncing from place to place, including a boys’ home and a children’s village, until he finally found a sense of belonging at the Gay and Lesbian Adolescent Social Services (GLASS). “Living among other teenagers that identified the same as I did was absolutely life-changing,” King said. “Now I had friends. Now I was living among people that were no longer going to make fun of me every day. I was no longer living with people that were going to place judgment on me.”
The lack of stability was hard for him growing up and a feeling he still had trouble with as an adult saying, “That was probably the biggest struggle as I was growing up as a young adult is not ever having that sense of security as a child. That had the biggest impact on me as an adult and that always became my number one priority, is establishing a sense of security.”
At 17 and a half, King’s family allowed him to return home. However, he dropped out of high school, moved back in with his mom, and started using drugs. After being kicked out, he moved around even more.
Eventually, he went to rehab and has been sober for about 18 years.
As an adult, King became a nurse and then a nursing home administrator before quitting his job to use his TikTok platform to make a living.
Now at the age of 51, he credits years of therapy for helping him heal.
“The entire family is going to be traumatized in one way or another,” he explained, talking about his parents’ decision decades ago. “It’s not an easy decision. And I know this because I’m at a place of forgiving, and accepting what’s happened in my life. So I know at the moment it’s never an easy decision for the parents to get to this point where they have to consider giving up the rights to their child. Then the other family members that are involved, seeing what’s taking place, knowing that, ‘Is this going to happen to me too?’”
King has accepted and forgiven his parents for doing the best they could under the circumstances. He spoke with both of them before they passed.
“When I look back on things now, it sounds absolutely traumatic and it was traumatic living through that, but surviving that and being on the surviving end, that doesn’t let the traumas of my childhood create resentment that I live and walk with every single day. It’s been a very forgiving place,” he said.
“The trauma that I lived through is what shaped me into the person that I am today,” he reflected.
For a deeper understanding of the complex decisions parents face when considering custody relief, explore our special report on Virginia’s custody crisis. Discover the stories behind these difficult choices and their impact on families.