Sunday Mirror (Northern Ireland)
My sex assault at 13... the secret I hid for 20 years
under and ended up with gravel embedded in my skin.”
Another boyfriend was even worse. “Before long he was smashing chairs over my head and throwing plates of food at me,” she says.
“It would happen a few times a week. He bit a chunk out of my back, once. I’d lie to protect him, I’d say I’d bumped into things when people noticed my bruises.”
The end of that relationship was a real low point. “He came to my parents’ house, begging me for another chance,” she says. “When I refused, he punched me in the face. I was knocked unconscious.” Danielle never contacted police because she just wanted to move on with her life.
In 2007 she ran into trouble on Celebrity Big Brother, accused of bullying Indian contestant Shilpa Shetty, with the late Jade Goody and Jo O’Meara.
“I had death threats after that,” she says. “I turned to drink and drugs. I was doing lines of coke every night and drinking bottles of vodka to block everything out.
“It got to the point where I thought I could literally just jump off the balcony.” In 2009 Danielle, then 25, went into rehab. Later she met England international footballer Jamie O’Hara.
They wed in 2012 and had three sons, Archie, six, Harry, five and George, three. But that ended in divorced in 2014 after he was accused of cheating on her.
Now Jamie is on Celebrity Big Brother, Danielle laughs at his flirting with Bianca Gascoigne.
Danielle got engaged to electrician Michael last year and is convinced he’s Mr Right.
“I’m such a strong person now and I have so much confidence,” she says. “I want to use what’s happened to help people and teach my kids right from wrong.”