Evan Rachel Wood Opened Up About Being Raped By Her Ex-Boyfriend And The Details Are Heartbreaking
She's featured in the new HBO documentary, 'Showbiz Kids'.
Getty Images A new HBO documentary called Showbiz Kids details the lives of child actors in the entertainment industry and is available to watch now. The documentary also covers the subject of the abuse that happened between powerful Hollywood figures and young actors.
One person who is predominantly featured in the documentary is actress Evan Rachel Wood.
A few years ago, Wood came forward with her own stories of sexual assault.
In 2018, Wood had opened up about being raped by two different men to Congress, in an effort to pass the Sexual Assault Survivor's Bill of Rights Act in all 50 states.
The 32-year-old actress told the U.S. House Judiciary committee about the two violent rapes she experienced. "[They're] burned into my brain and branded there for life," she said. "A mental scar that I feel every day."
Her first sexual assaulter was her boyfriend.
“My experience with domestic violence is this: Toxic mental, physical and sexual abuse that started slow but escalated over time including threats against my life, severe gas-lighting and brain washing, and waking up to the man who claimed to love me raping what he believed to be my unconscious body,” she told the panel.
“Sick rituals of binding me up by hands and feet to be mentally and physically tortured until my abuser felt I had proved my love for them.
In this moment of being tied up and beaten and being told unspeakable things I truly felt that I could die, not just because my abuser said to me ‘I could kill you right now’, but because in that moment I felt like I left my body and was too afraid to run because he could find me. I froze.”
The other incident happened when she was raped by a man who locked her in a closet after hours at a bar.
"Because of this abuse, my already spiritless person when I was pushed onto the floor of a locked storage closet by another attacker after hours at a bar, my body instinctively knew what to do," Woods said. "Disappear, go numb, make it go away. Being abused and raped previously made it easier for me to be raped again, not the other way around.”
Woods said that it wasn't until years later that she was diagnosed with PTSD. She struggled with depression, addiction, agoraphobia, night terrors, and even tried to commit suicide twice.
The Sexual Assault Survivors Bill of Rights Act would give survivors free rape kits after their assault, as well as the results and the option to preserve the evidence after the statute of limitations on the attack runs out.
In the new HBO documentary, Showbiz Kids, Wood spoke out about abuse against child actors in the entertainment world.
She reveals that "pretty much all" young male actors face abuse, and that she even became distressed after watching one of the alleged pedophiles (who she did not name) win a Golden Globe.
She goes into further detail, explaining, “Any industry that has that much power and is that competitive because after a while it starts to become, ‘Well, who can take the most abuse?’ Because somebody’s waiting in line to take your place, so you just start to allow yourself to be abused in some form or another..."
"...Every actor is guilty of that. They’re lying if they say they’re not because it’s just part of the deal at this point. And unfortunately, until things change, there’s always going to be somebody willing to take abuse and stay quiet.”
Wood also pointed out how the photoshoots she did as a child made her uncomfortable. She also admitted to feeling very lonely in her childhood, as she spent most of it on her own.
"I spent a lot of time alone on set, doing school in a trailer, being alone in hotel rooms. You're very much isolated most of the time and it's a very fulfilling but lonely experience," she reveals.
Please contact the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-4673 to be connected with a trained staff member from a sexual assault service provider in your area.
Editor's Note: This article was originally posted in March 2018 and was updated with the latest information.
Emily Blackwood is a writer and editor living in California. She covers all things news, pop culture and true crime. Visit her website for more.