Jessica Simpson has revealed that she was sexually abused as a child ahead of the release of her upcoming memoir, Open Book.
On Tuesday (January 22), People published excerpts from the book, where the business mogul, 39, admitted that she was just six-years-old when the abuse started after sharing a bed with a family friend's daughter. "It would start with tickling my back and then go into things that were extremely uncomfortable," she wrote. "I wanted to tell my parents. I was the victim but somehow I felt in the wrong."
When Simpson told her parents, Tina and Joe Simpson, it appeared to be a nightmare come true. "'I told you something was happening,'" she recalled Tina yelling. "Dad kept his eye on the road and said nothing. We never stayed at my parents’ friends house again but we also didn’t talk about what I had said."
Among another bombshell that appears in the memoir includes the resulting emotional pain, along with other stresses from fame, that prompted her to abuse alcohol and pills due to the trauma. "Giving up the alcohol was easy," she said. "I was mad at that bottle. At how it allowed me to stay complacent and numb. . .When I finally said I needed help, it was like I was that little girl that found her calling again in life. "I found direction and that was to walk straight ahead with no fear."
Open Book will be available on February 4 and includes an audiobook, as well as six previously unreleased songs.
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