Dancer and actress Julianne Hough recently opened up about her experience of childhood sexual abuse, revealing that the traumatic event occurred when she was just four years old.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, in a recent interview, Hough disclosed that her abuser was a neighbour living in the same Utah cul-de-sac as her family.
“I’ve actually never said that out loud to anybody in an interview before,” Hough confessed, reflecting on the confusing nature of her upbringing in the Mormon culture, where the expectation of perfection often overshadowed personal struggles.
“Everything needs to be perfect, everybody needs to put on the shiny, we’ve got our stuff together. And there was not a lot of repercussions for what had happened,” she said.
Hough expressed that the silence surrounding such experiences was not unique to her, revealing that other family members had also endured similar forms of abuse.
“Nobody did anything,” she stated, emphasising the collective challenge of confronting these painful truths.
During the interview, Hough explained that she did not disclose the specifics of her abuse to her parents until later in her life, having “forgotten” about the incident.
Memories of the trauma only resurfaced in recent years as she engaged in personal work aimed at healing. “I had forgotten about the neighbour thing at four years old until I started really doing this work in the last few years,” she said.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, she added, “That’s why I think I blocked out from birth to 10, basically, because I had completely disassociated from that ever happening.”
Later in the discussion, Hough noted that her parents are no longer in contact with her abuser and that her mother acted swiftly to move the family out of the neighbourhood after learning of the incident.
Hough’s experiences did not end there; she previously disclosed in a 2013 interview that she faced further abuse during her time at a dance academy in London, according to The Hollywood Reporter.