Television personality Nadiya Hussain, who recently opened up about being sexually assaulted at the age of five by a relative in Bangladesh, said she would love nothing more than to forget some of her memories.
“But these stories are there to be told,” said Hussain.
In an interview with Mail on Sunday, Hussain talks about how the trauma of being assaulted played a role in her panic attacks and post traumatic stress disorder.
Hussain opens up about the ordeal for the first time in her new book, Finding My Voice. She had previously only told her sisters and a friend at school.
“It turned out a very similar thing had happened to her… [and] I think it’s important to talk about it because it probably happens much more than we care to talk about,” she said.
Hussain said it took her years to understand what had actually happened.
“If that happened to my children, I don’t even want to say what I would do. I can’t even… just as a mother… I can’t. I have no words. I very rarely have no words,” she added.
The 2015 Great British Bake Off winner also contemplated suicide at the age of 10.
“I didn’t know what death was,” she writes. “All I knew was that it meant not living the life I had now – and I didn’t like my life.”
She changed her mind after her parents announced her mother was pregnant with her brother.
“I can’t go anywhere, I have to stay for him. He will need me,” she writes.
