Nikki Bella is revealing her truth on why she decided to step forward with the awful details behind her past sexual assaults. In a memoir she wrote titled Incomparable, co-written by her sister Brie Bella, she uncovered a painful secret she’s been holding on to for decades now. As she and her sister were guests on Maria Menounos’ YouTube daytime talk show Better Together with Maria Menounos, Bella opened up about why she felt it was time to come forward.
“The #MeToo movement is when Brie and I really talked about it again, because I put it away for so long. And I remember telling Brie, ‘I’d do anything to have these women be around when it happened to me’ because I probably would’ve ended up talking about it to my mom, someone,” Bella explained. “I would’ve gotten help, but instead, we didn’t have that. And it was like after we got this opportunity to write the memoir, it was just like, maybe I need to help be the role model for people, and not be a victim to it. I don’t want any high school girl to waste 20 years of her life holding on to what I held on to. I want her to break free.”
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At 15 years old, Bella says she was raped by a fellow high school student, and then again, when she was 16 by a college-age man. During such a difficult time, Bella always had the support of her sister . In fact, Brie encouraged Bella to come out wit her story telling her she would have her back no matter what during the #MeToo movement, but sadly, her sister still didn’t have the confidence to go public with it just yet. “Even when I was talking to Nikki during the #MeToo movement, I was like, ‘Hashtag it! Tweet it! I’ve got your back. It’s time to tell your story.’ And she still didn’t have enough courage at the time … and it was sad for me to see someone who was innocent still not have the courage to speak about it. And that’s when we knew we had to talk about it in the book.”
Bella added, “I held on to that for over 20 years, and like, very few people knew, and it was something that affected me so much. I was in and out of therapy all the time, and by choice. I would go pay for it because I didn’t want to tell my parents … I always blamed myself. I carried so much guilt and shame for so long, like ‘Nichole, you put yourself in that situation! Why did you have to be there! Why did you go to the party! You knew it wasn’t right!’ And I carried that up until my 30s and it really took our ghostwriter to say the word ‘rapes’ because I would even refuse to say the word. I couldn’t even, like, say it because it would put me back in such a moment. It’s just a vision you don’t ever want to see.”
