Forever 21 Worker Fired After She Tells Her Traumatic Story

Companies usually have a tight muzzle on employees when it comes to talking to the press, and even fire workers for embarrassing them in the media. But a San Diego worker at Forever 21, the retail chain, didn't expect to lose her job when she told a local weekly her story of overcoming a life of drug addiction and childhood abuse.

In April, Cassie Briscoe appeared on the cover of the San Diego Reader, an alternative news weekly. Inside, she revealed the traumatic childhood that drove her to drugs, and how she kicked her addiction, found religion and a job, with her house arrest bracelet still on her ankle. But soon after the story came out, Briscoe says that the famously Christian-owned retailer fired her, claiming that she'd concealed her felony on her application -- which Briscoe flatly denies.

"I didn't expect this would turn around on me like this," Briscoe told San Diego station KGTV. "I only saw good things coming from it."

A Childhood Of Tragedy
When Briscoe was 11, her grandmother's husband brutally attacked her family, murdering her grandmother, stabbing her mother 27 times, and her 7-year-old brother twice, she said. Her mother abandoned her soon after, and her father committed suicide.