Nikki Bella is bravely coming forward as a survivor of rape.
In her new memoir, “Incomparable,” Nikki details her sexual assaults: one of which took place when she was 15 years old at the hands of a fellow student who she “thought was a friend.” The other took place when she was 16 years old at the hands of a college-aged individual who drugged her.
“There is the horrible offense in the moment, and then the shame and blame that follow and feel almost worse than the original pain,” Nikki write in her memoir. “When something like this happens to you, you understand the blame-the-victim mentality, how easy it is to feel shame rather than anger, how easy it is to feel like you could have stopped it yourself.”
Speaking with People, Nikki added, “When that happened to me, I immediately just felt so ashamed and blamed myself, and that’s what made me want to keep it such a secret. And keeping that a secret and blaming myself, I started to lose my confidence. I started to disrespect myself. And then the relationships I got into at a young age, I let other people disrespect me and felt like, that’s okay, this is what I deserved.”
“When the #MeToo movement happened, I was just like, ‘Oh my gosh,’” Nikki added. “I feel like, if I’m having these younger women look up to me, maybe I can help them and have them not hold onto this as long as I did. It wasn’t until I was 28 and in a relationship where someone started to teach me how to respect myself. That’s how long I held on to things and felt I had no boundaries. And I’d always look at Brie like, ‘Oh, she has boundaries, she treats herself with such respect. How do I not have this?’ And I knew why. But I held onto it for so long. When I look back at just decisions I made based off of it, I wish I could have heard my words now as a 36-year-old woman then, and be like, ‘You’re going to be okay.’”
In her memoir, Nikki also revealed the reason why she and John Cena broke up.
