By Yulia Tulegenova
A man in Singapore has been sent to jail for nine days.
His name is Johnson Ven. He’s 26. And his crime? He jumped a barrier at the premiere of the new Wicked film and grabbed Ariana Grande.
You read the news, and you see the sentence – nine days – and you have to ask: is that it? Is that the price of terrorising a woman who has already lived through one of the most horrific public traumas imaginable?
Because let’s be clear about what happened here. This wasn’t a hug. This wasn’t an over-enthusiastic fan asking for a selfie. This was an ambush. A man, known online as “Pajama Man,” a serial nuisance who has done this sort of thing before at Katy Perry and The Weeknd concerts, physically grabbed a woman and pulled her towards him. He tried to do it twice. He posted about it on Instagram afterwards, thanking her for “letting” him do it.
It’s not funny. It’s not quirky. It’s predatory.
And when the victim is Ariana Grande, the context changes everything. This is a woman who survived the Manchester bombing in 2017. Twenty-two people died at her concert. She has spoken openly, bravely, about her PTSD, about the anxiety that has shadowed her life ever since.
So when a man jumps a barrier and grabs her, she doesn’t just feel annoyance. She feels terror. Real, visceral terror. The kind that takes you right back to the worst moment of your life.
At first, you might think, well, it’s just a prankster. He didn’t have a weapon. He just wanted attention. The judge called him an “attention seeker.” But that language feels dangerously soft. It minimises what he did. He breached her safety. He violated her space. He made her feel unsafe in her place of work.
And the sentence? Nine days. The law allowed for three months. The judge gave him nine days. It feels like a slap on the wrist with a wet lettuce leaf. A shrug. A message that says, “Well, boys will be boys,” or “That’s the price of fame.”
But fame shouldn’t cost you your physical safety. It shouldn’t mean that your body is public property, available to be grabbed by any idiot with an Instagram account and a lack of boundaries.
The real hero of this story, if there is one, is Cynthia Erivo. The footage shows her stepping in, physically putting herself between Grande and the attacker. That’s not just co-star solidarity. That’s a protective instinct kicking in. She knew. She understood, in that split second, that this wasn’t okay.
The whole thing makes you wonder about the culture we’ve built around celebrity. We treat them like zoo animals. We feel entitled to their time, their attention, their physical presence. And when someone crosses the line, we treat it as a minor infraction, a bit of a joke. “Oh, look at the crazy fan.”
But it’s not a joke. It’s a violation.
Johnson Ven will be out in a week and a half. He’ll probably have more followers on Instagram. He’ll be a minor celebrity in his own right. He got exactly what he wanted. Attention.
And Ariana Grande? She has to get back on a plane, go to another premiere, walk another red carpet, and smile for the cameras, wondering if the next person to jump the barrier will just want a hug, or something worse.
Nine days. It doesn’t feel like justice. It feels like an insult. It feels like the legal system saying that a woman’s fear, even a famous woman’s fear, just isn’t that big a deal. And that, frankly, is terrifying in itself.
