Julianne Hough reveals childhood abuse suffered while overseas

Dancer, singer and actress Julianne Hough, who plays a victim of abuse in the upcoming film “Safe Haven,” has her own backstory of abuse suffered as a child, she revealed to Cosmopolitan in the mag’s February issue.

After winning a five-year scholarship to the Italia Conti Academy of the Arts, where her brother Derek Hough was studying, a 10-year-old Julianne headed from Utah to London to train in dance.

The now-24-year-old told the mag that while in London, far from her recently divorced parents, “I was abused, mentally, physically, everything,” she said. It got worse “when I started hitting puberty, when I started becoming a woman and stopped being a little girl.”

That’s where the details stop. “I’m a very forgiving person, and I don’t want to hurt anybody. What’s past is past.” Still, give her credit for giving up that much.

“This is the farthest I’ve ever gotten into my London situation,” she said. “I was told if I ever went back to the United States, three things were going to happen. One: I was going to amount to nothing. Two: I was going to work at Whataburger. And three: I was going to end up a slut. So, it was like, I can’t go back. I have to be this person.”

There’s no Whataburger uniform these days for Hough, who recently rode out Superstorm Sandy stranded in a New York hotel room with beau and fellow workaholic Ryan Seacrest. “We couldn’t work,” Hough said. “We just got to stay in our bed and in our pajamas.” When the power cut out entirely, they traded movie-watching for time together by candlelight.

“Safe Haven,” also starring Josh Duhamel, opens Feb. 14; the February issue of Cosmo hits newsstands next week.

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