Julianne Hough broke her silence about being sexually abused at 4 years old by a neighbor.
Hough, 36, opened up about the childhood trauma during the Thursday, August 15, episode of “The Jamie Kern Lima Show,” saying, “My first experience was when I was about 4 years old. [It was] a neighbor in our cul-de-sac. I’ve actually never said that out loud to someone in an interview before. That was a very confusing time, because growing up in the Mormon culture, everything needs to be perfect.”
According to Hough, there was “not a lot of repercussion” for what happened.
“And by the way, I’m not the only one in my family that had gone through similar things. And so that was a very challenging thing to come to terms with which is that nobody did anything,” she revealed. “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.”
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Hough initially forgot about the experience because she “blocked out” her childhood memories. She credited her recent healing journey for helping access parts of her life she wasn’t ready to face before.
“I forgot about it. Then other things happened later in my childhood and at about 15, and I started sharing those things but I forgot about the neighbor thing,” she explained. “It wasn’t until I started doing the work recently. That’s why I blocked out from 10 to 15, because I had completely disassociated from that happening.”
Julianne hinted that she went through a similar traumatic experience when she and brother Derek Hough were sent overseas by their parents to live and study with their dance coaches, Corky and Shirley Ballas.
It took time for Julianne to reconcile with her parents, who “felt guilty” about how the issue was initially handled.
“We both are experiencing different things even if it’s the same circumstances. For myself, it was all of my experiences about what happened to me, and in their experience, they have their own guilt and shame of other things that they were trying to do in the moment,” she noted on Thursday. “So they can’t hear what happened because they were having their own experience.”
Julianne confirmed that her family is no longer in contact with the neighbor who abused her. As she was breaking down the difficult parts of her childhood, Julianne started to tear up because she unlocked a memory of her mother trying to support her.
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“When I came back and told my mom at 4, my clothes were inside out. She asked why they were inside out. I said, ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’ And she said, ‘Tell me what happened,’” she detailed. “My only way of describing it — because we weren’t allowed carbonation as kids — was saying, ‘I felt like I had a Sprite bottle between my legs.’ So she freaked out and was panicking and her response was, ‘Get up and move.’ The reaction thing was let’s move out of this neighborhood.”
At the time, Julianne didn’t realize that the move was her parents getting their family out of the bad situation.
“My brother was hung upside down and there was a gun put to his head. There were all sorts of things by these people,” the actress said before getting choked up. “I guess my mom did do what she could and she wanted to move and leave. She didn’t want to talk about it, but she did want to get us out.”
Julianne, who has three sisters in addition to brother Derek, 39, recalled her siblings having their own traumatic experiences.
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“The people that also violated my sisters or my brother or myself, they never got reprimanded for it. Because we didn’t say something,” she added. “Instead we just pivoted and we moved. Which is good because we got out of the situation, but for me, that is another thing where I just pivot, pivot, pivot.”
Julianne called the emotional conversation a “profound revelation” that her mother did “the best she could.” She also shared how her 2020 divorce from Brooks Laich allowed her to reconnect with her parents.
“During my divorce is when I really reconnected with my parents and they showed up for me — as my parents,” she concluded. “And I needed that. I reclaimed my parental relationship with them and I got to be the kid and they got to take care of me. And that was the most healing [thing].”
If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, contact the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).
