Khushboo Sundar, a veteran actress and politician in the South-Indian industry, recently opened up on her traumatic childhood experience, where she was sexually abused by her father.
“He was sexually abusive towards me, he was physically abusive towards my brothers. Physically extremely abusive towards my brothers and my mother. He would beat them up with a belt, buckle, heels of a shoe. He would punch my mother. We have seen all that. He would slam my mother to the wall. So we have seen the man be so abusive,” recalled Khushboo while talking to Vicky Lalwani.
Confessing why she was hesitant to speak about it, Khushboo shared “There was this fear instilled in me that if you are going to speak about what he did, to anybody, then he would abuse them more, beat them up more. So I had to bear the brunt as I was already seeing how he was beating up my brothers and my mother. I was very scared.”
Khushboo stated that moving to Chennai was a turning part of her life as it gave her confidence. “After shifting to Chennai I got the confidence to speak up. The first time I spoke up was when I was 14,” revealed the Annaatthe actress.
Crediting hairdresser, Ubin for giving her courage, she said, “She probably noticed his (father) touches and she had doubts because she herself had four grown up children. She was a single parent herself so she probably suspected that this man is probably not right. She had seen how he (her father) would beat her up on (shoot) location and on coming into the (hotel) room. She probably realised his body language towards me was not right. So she spoke to me, she asked me. That’s when I broke down to her and she told me that I have to speak to my mom.”
“But after two years when I started working in the south and became fully independent. That’s when I decided that I have to speak up. That’s when I spoke about it to my mother and brothers about it and I learned to say no to my dad. That’s when the problems grew. ‘How dare she say no?’ I learned to say no a bit before I spoke to my mother when I realised that it is not normal, it is sexual abuse,” she added.
See insights and ads
