PUSSYCAT Dolls star Kimberly Wyatt has bravely opened up about her childhood sexual abuse.
The singer, 44, revealed how her past trauma had “chipped away at her soul”, as she talked about what had happened in an emotional meeting with Davina McCall.
Kimberly, who is part of the new Pussycat Dolls comeback, revealed she was abused at the age of three.
The star – who made no suggestion it was her parents who had abused her – opened up to Davina on her Begin Again podcast.
Kimberly has spoken in the past about being molested as a toddler and also how someone tried to rape her when she was 17 and working on a cruise ship.
But in the new interview, she bravely talked about her childhood being blighted by “darkness”, and left her “struggling to look in the mirror”.
Kimberly, who is happily married to husband Max Rogers, said: “You know I experienced a lot of sexual abuse and that really chipped away at my confidence, at my soul, at my feeling of being safe and that really was the making of me as a kid. I was very introverted.”
Delving into her childhood, the mum-of-three said: “I grew up in a small, little town in Missouri, Middle America called Warrensburg, very much a farm town.
“My dad delivered fuel to farmers and he was a fuel guide, delivering oil, driving trucks, was gone a lot. My mum worked for him, so we lived on a farm way out in the country in my smaller years.
“It was idyllic in so many ways because I loved to try to be just as tough as the boys and loved going muddying in trucks and doing all this farm life.
“Gosh in the UK I don’t even see these types of things going on. So to think back there’s so much of it that’s pretty brilliant, of what I got to experience in those early farm years.”
Continuing Kimberly said: “But it was also the making and the breaking of me, living in that wonderful little lovely area. My grandmother lived just around the corner…
“My grandmother was my everything, Grandma Jane. She showed me a love and a selflessness that to this day, that’s what has made me the mum that I strive to be everyday when I wake up…
“The bad was I had brilliant parents, I think who tried their best but there was a lot of darkness in my very young years, through my formative years to my young teen years.”
Talking about her past trauma and how she has tried to evolve in the years since, she said: “I didn’t like what I saw in the mirror.
“I was constantly running away from social situations. I didn’t have a lot of friends and I think that those moments were really what defined why that made me who I was in that time.
“But the thing that turned everything around for me was getting into the dance studio.
“I stepped into the dance studio because I loved the Olympics, I loved the figure skating and the gymnastics and what these people could do with their bodies and the stories they could tell through movement.”
The star then said: “I experienced a lot of sexual abuse that really chipped away at my soul. But getting into dance really opened my eyes. There’s a whole world out there.”
Kimberly first shot to fame in the Pussycat Dolls in 2003.
After relocating to Britain from the US, the star has since become a household name in the UK.
Kimberly has been on shows like Dancing on Ice, The Jump and she even won the BBC’s Celebrity MasterChef
It was recently revealed that the talented star would be joining Nicole Scherzinger and Ashley Roberts in the new Pussycat Dolls trio.
