General Hospital's Sonny Corinthos is a complicated man who did not arrive on the Port Charles scene as the "mobster with the heart of gold" that he's portrayed as today. Instead, he was a sleazy strip club owner who didn't seem to have a conscience at all.
For years, General Hospital has tried to downplay or even bury how Sonny was first introduced to the audience in what was supposed to be a short-term role. We've seen Scott Baldwin get in his face many times, bringing up what Sonny did to his late daughter Karen. However, many fans never got to hear exactly what Sonny did until the March 5, 2024, episode. That was also when Anna and Ava learned a bit more about a man they've frequently defended.
It might not have been the right place or time, but the FBI agent formerly known as Jagger, who now calls himself John, laid it all out. Sonny took advantage of a teenage Karen Wexler when she was just 17 years old.
When the audience first met teenage Karen in 1992, she was dating Jason Quartermaine before the car crash that morphed him into Jason Morgan. However, that ended when she fell for bad boy Jagger Cates. Jagger also fell for Karen and didn't understand what was happening when Karen began frequenting seedy bars. He had no idea that Karen's repressed memories of being molested by her mother's boyfriend Ray had returned.
Karen met a young man named Stone during one of her bar outings, and he introduced her to Sonny Corinthos, the man he worked for. Sonny convinced Karen to become a stripper at his club called the Paradise Lounge. When she felt nervous about performing, he would give her drugs to calm her, which she quickly became addicted to. He also slept with her when she was underage.
Sonny admitted all of that to John as they stood in Selina Wu's warehouse and dug into the past. However, Sonny claimed he was just trying to help Karen and tried to whitewash what happened more than 30 years ago.
That doesn't mean there isn't video evidence of how he treated Karen during that time -- and it wasn't warm, fuzzy, and caring. In fact, X (formerly known as Twitter) user @HotVannaNights brought the receipts to the social media platform after the March 5 episode aired. When Karen finally decided she'd had enough, she and Sonny had an emotional and tension-filled argument in his apartment, where he threw the fact that she was molested in her face.
"Glanced at the [timeline] and saw claims by Sonny that he was trying to 'help and listen' to Karen," she wrote. "Yeah I wouldn't classify it that way when he's telling her she must've wanted to be molested as a child by her mom's bf...."
You can see the confrontation in the tweeted video below.
Glanced at the TL and saw claims by Sonny that he was trying to "help and listen" to Karen. Yeah I wouldn't classify it that way when he's telling her she must've wanted to be molested as a child by her mom's bf.... #GH pic.twitter.com/AxJb0PrVWr
ó Jackie (@HotVannaNights) March 5, 2024
Karen eventually broke free of Sonny, married Jagger, and attended medical school out of town. In 1997, she returned to Port Charles -- both the town and the spin-off series -- as a doctor doing her residency at GH. Sadly, in 2003, while still a Port Charles character, Karen was tragically killed in a fatal car crash.
What do you think? Is Sonny whitewashing his past with Karen? We want to hear from you -- so drop your comments in the Comments section below, tweet about it on Twitter, share it on Facebook, or chat about it on our Message Boards.
