Julianne Hough Opens up About Being Sexually Abused at 4 Years Old

The 'Dancing With the Stars' co-host had never spoken about this childhood abuse publicly.

By Anna Rumer

Julianne Hough is opening up for the first time about suffering sexual abuse when she was a young child. The Dancing With the Stars co-host, 36, spoke about her "first experience" with sexual abuse during an Aug. 15 appearance on The Jamie Kern Lima Show.

Hough was "about 4 years old" and living in Utah with her family when she was abused by a neighbor during what she called a "very confusing time." The dancer continued that the experience impacted her for years to come. "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."

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(Photo:

Julianne Hough attends the 96th Annual Academy Awards on March 10, 2024 in Hollywood, California.

- Kevin Mazur/Getty Images)

The Footloose actress said she "forgot about" the abuse for years until she was confiding in her parents around age 15 about suffering other abuse. (Hough previously told Cosmopolitan in 2013 that she had been mentally and physically abused at age 10 while she was living in London with brother Derek Hough to attend a dance academy.)

"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," Hough explained, noting that she had "blocked out from birth to 10 basically because I had completely disassociated from [the abuse] ever happening."

She continued, "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 [that] other people have the power."

Hough's parents "felt guilty" after learning she had been abused. "At the time, when I was younger, I think they also didn't know what to do. And were also in a position of not feeling capable or also feeling helpless," she shared. "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.'"

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It was only when Hough went through her divorce from husband Brooks Laich in 2020 that she truly repaired things with her parents. "During my divorce is when I really reconnected with my parents and they showed up for me as my parents," Hough explained. "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."

 If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, you can contact the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673) or go to rainn.org.

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