Julianne Hough is getting candid on early childhood abuse.
While on “The Jamie Kern Lima Show” Thursday, the 36-year-old said her “first experience” with sexual abuse was when she was growing up in Utah at “about 4 years old.”
Hough shared that the perpetrator was a “neighbor,” calling it a “very confusing time.”
“There was not a lot of repercussion for what had happened – and by the way, I’m not the only one in my family that had gone through similar things,” she said. “And so that was a very challenging thing to come to terms with. Nobody did anything.”
Hough admitted that this was the first time she’s been publicly open about the abuse, noting she has “never said that out loud to anybody in an interview before.”
The “Dancing With the Stars” judge then took a moment to reflect on how she felt going through such traumatic times as a young girl.
“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,” Hough told the host.
The “Footloose” actress ended up confiding in her parents about the abuse “later on because [she] forgot about it.”
However, after facing other experiences with abuse at 15, Hough decided it was time to tell her parents what had happened.
“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,” the dancer recalled.
Hough confessed that she “blocked out from birth to 10 basically because I had completely disassociated from it ever happening.”
The Utah native shared that her parents “felt guilty” after learning what she’d been through.
“At the time, when I was younger, I think they also didn’t know what to do,” stated Hough. “And were also in a position of not feeling capable or also feeling helpless. We’ve definitely gone through conversation after conversation like, ‘But we get it now, right? And we’re on the same page? I’m not blaming you now, but I definitely needed more at the time.’ “
But she was able to reconnect with her parents during her 2020 split from ex-husband Brooks Laich.
“During my divorce is when I really reconnected with my parents and they showed up for me – as my parents,” Hough recalled. “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].”
These days, the “Safe Haven” alum has done the work to heal and reflect on her life while writing her new novel “Everything We Never Knew.”
“Now, as an adult, and the healing I’ve gone through, I actually want to talk about it more, and I think that it’s uncomfortable to have those conversations over and over again,” Hough said, “because it’s not just, ‘OK, we’ve had this conversation once and cool now we’re all good.’ I think you have to have those conversations to feel that reassurance and safety that I get it. I really get it.”
Meanwhile, she knows that not everyone will be willing to have those talks.
Hough added, “Sometimes people are not going to get it, and sometimes people aren’t going to want to have those conversations over and over again, and so that’s the whole, I have to come back to myself. Am I safe now? Am I OK?”
