Nikki Bella Reveals She Was Raped Twice as a Teenager
Nikki Bella is getting candid about her painful past in her new memoir, Incomparable, co-written with twin sister Brie.
In the book, she shares grueling details of her sexual assaults and why she felt ashamed to share her truth.
Nikki writes that she was raped by a fellow high school student at 15 years old, someone she “thought was a friend,” according to People magazine.
Then, at 16, she was raped again after being drugged by a college-aged man.
“There is the horrible offense in the moment, and then the shame and blame that follow and feel almost worse than the original pain,” she wrote in the book. “When something like this happens to you, you understand the blame-the-victim mentality, how easy it is to feel shame rather than anger, how easy it is to feel like you could have stopped it yourself.”
“When that happened to me, I immediately just felt so ashamed and blamed myself, and that’s what made me want to keep it such a secret,” she said to People in an interview. “And keeping that a secret and blaming myself, I started to lose my confidence. I started to disrespect myself. And then the relationships I got into at a young age, I let other people disrespect me and felt like, that’s okay, this is what I deserved.”
“I was like that for a really long time,” she admits. “I would go to therapy on and off. Looking at it now I’m like, ‘Oh Nicole, I wish you just would’ve let go at a young age. So much would have changed for you.’ And I think that’s what made me really want to tell these stories finally.”
Wow. Thank you for being so honest, Nikki.