Julianne Hough spoke out about the sexual abuse she suffered as a child for the first time during an emotional appearance on “The Jamie Kern Lima Show.”
On Tuesday, Hough revealed one of her “neighbors” in Utah began sexually abusing her when she was “about 4 years old.”
“I’ve actually never said that out loud to anybody in an interview before,” she said.
“But yeah, that was a very, very confusing time because, obviously, growing up in the Mormon culture, everything needs to be perfect, everybody needs to put on their shiny ‘We got our stuff together’ [face] and there was not a lot of repercussion for what had happened,” she explained.
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The “Dancing With the Stars” host, 36, noted that she “was not the only one in [her] family that had gone through similar things.”
However, knowing she wasn’t alone in the abuse only made things harder “to come to terms with.”
“Nobody did anything,” she said.
Hough told her parents about the experience “later on because [she] forgot about it” as she got older and dealt with even more trauma.
“Other things happened later in my childhood, and then at about 15, I came home and I started sharing those things, but I had forgot about the neighbor thing at 4 years old until I started really doing this work in the last few years.”
Before then, Hough had completely “blocked out” all her memories “from birth to 10.”
“I had completely disassociated from [the abuse] ever happening,” she said.
She was forced to face her trauma while writing her new book, “Everything We Never Knew,” a fictionalized supernatural novel rooted in her life experiences.
The professional dancer said it took decades for her to heal from the trauma after putting up so many barriers to protect herself — both mentally and physically.
“I think being so young, and those being your first experiences — whether it be physical, mental, sexual — those abuses of power to someone who is vulnerable to it — it immediately sets a precedent of: Other people have the power,” she explained.
Hough left Utah when she was 10 and moved to London with her brother, Derek, to attend a prestigious dance academy.
However, in 2013, Hough told Cosmopolitan that the adults at her school took advantage of the fact she was overseas without her parents.
“While I was in London, I was abused, mentally, physically, everything,” she told the outlet.
Although she didn’t elaborate on exactly what happened, Hough said the abuse got worse “when [she] started hitting puberty.
“When I started becoming a woman and stopped being a little girl,” she said.
Hough was on a five-year scholarship and returned home to the States when she was 15.
If you or someone you know is affected by any of the issues raised in this story, call the Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-330-0226.
