Pearlman was never prosecuted for any sex crimes, and in a 2014 jailhouse interview with Billboard magazine, he denied that he had committed any. “The accusations that came out in that article, none of it was substantiated,” he said.
In 2015, the Backstreet Boys—including Carter—shared their conflicted feelings about the man who minted their band, but stole from it too. “We’re appreciative [for] what he had done for us, and thankful, to a certain degree, and to a large degree, because he gave us our shot,” Carter said in a group interview with The Seven Sees. “These are hard things to experience, when someone that you look up to, sort of as a family figure or a mentor, does something that’s just so astronomically crazy, just something that you would never think that they would do. Then you hear these stories. It’s just a sad story in the end, not just for us or him, but for the people that he hurt. So there’s a lot of conflict internally about how we feel.”
In 2020, Nick Carter’s younger brother Aaron, who also signed with Pearlman as a child, was asked directly whether Pearlman ever behaved inappropriately around him. “Lou never did anything weird,” Carter told a YouTube interviewer, before revealing he was a survivor of sexual assault—just not by the manager. “I’ve known Lou since I was a little child, man. Nothing. He was a big poppa bear, he’s like a a Santa Claus.” As for the financial crimes, Carter said matter-of-factly, “I don’t blame him. Why not? He put all his money and time, invested everything into that group, and gave them their careers that they still have today. I’m not going to be the one that’s gonna be like, [in whiny, complaint voice] ‘Oh yeah, Lou Pearlman’s…’ No.”
Dirty Pop gauzily addresses some sexual impropriety claims. Kirkpatrick recalls Pearlman urging him and his fellow ’NSync band members to stay in shape, grabbing their arms, and asking to peek at their abs. Tammie Hilton, a nurse that Pearlman befriended, recalls how she was surprised when Pearlman introduced her as his girlfriend at a social gathering. “I think he was trying to force himself to be in some kind of boyfriend-girlfriend-type relationship,” she says, thinking back to the one time they kissed and “there was no spark at all.” Asked why she thinks Pearlman introduced her as his girlfriend, Hilton answers, “He knew that everybody already thought that he was either some kind of child molester or pedophile or something. I never saw that.” After a few minutes of discussion in Dirty Pop’s second episode, the conversation moves on. There is little talk of the emotional wreckage Pearlman may have left behind.
Perhaps that is because the late manager’s most outspoken accuser, Rich Cronin, lead singer and songwriter of LFO, died in 2010 from a stroke while battling leukemia. The year before his death, Cronin relayed his claims to Howard Stern. Asked whether the manager touched him inappropriately, Cronin said, “Eventually he did.… There were a lot of guys that did go for it. And if they went for it, he took care of ’em. He’d buy ’em cars.” He added, “I had to go through lots of therapy. I went crazy.… I mean, the guy was awful. Besides all this money stuff, he was really a creepy guy.”