Nadiya: I was abused as a child
SHE won legions of fans on The Great British Bake Off with her bubbly personality and has gone on to become one of Britain’s best-loved celebrity chefs.
But today Nadiya Hussain reveals that behind her cheerful public persona, lies a harrowing childhood incident that left lasting mental scars. In a powerful and poignant interview with The Mail on Sunday’s You magazine, the baker tells how she was sexually assaulted by a relative at the age of five.
Now 34, she says the traumatic crime contributed to a suicide attempt at the age of ten, and left her suffering panic attacks and post- traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) for decades.
Nadiya said: ‘No doubt that would have played a role in my PTSD, my panic disorder. It must have done, because it’s a memory that has stayed with me for ever.’
The chef – who writes about the attack in Bangladesh in her forthcoming memoir Finding My Voice – said she only fully understood what had happened when she learned about sex in a biology class. The realisation made her throw up in a sink on the laboratory bench.
‘I’ve only told my sisters recently and, growing up, I had a close friend at school who I told. It turned out a very similar thing had happened to her,’ Nadiya said. ‘ It’s important to talk about it because it probably happens much more than we care to talk about.
‘If that happened to my children, I don’t even want to say what I would do… I have no words.’
Nadiya also reveals how deeply she had been scarred by bullying at primary school by boys who dunked her head in the toilet and harassed her for being ‘too dark’.
She says that she still cannot go to the toilet without flashbacks. ‘It was the most hideous thing ever. You feel like you’re drowning.’
She said the first time she heard the word ‘suicide’, aged ten, she considered it could be a ‘bus ticket’ out of her torment. One evening she tried to overdose on tablets but was interrupted by the news that her mother was pregnant with her brother, Shak.