LEICESTER, ENGLAND: Rebekah Vardy recently recalled the trauma of growing up as a Jehovah's Witness as she revealed how she was sexually abused at the age of 12 and the crimes were hushed up by the "dangerous cult." The 41-year-old wife of Leicester City star, Jamie, and a mother-of-five, made the harrowing revelations in a new Channel 4 documentary, where she interviewed former Jehovah's Witnesses who went through similar ordeals.
Vardy reportedly said that a friend of her family had sexually abused her from the age of 12, but when she tried to fight it, the abuse was concealed by the "elders"—leaders of the JW community—because it would have brought shame to her family. "I call it a cult. People are manipulated, brainwashed, it's coercive behavior and it is handed down from generation to generation,” she told the Daily Mail, adding, “Once you're in it, it's so hard to see the bigger picture, which is that it's wrong and immoral. I spent my childhood fearful, being told we were going to die in Armageddon if we didn't pray enough. I felt I had to constantly strive for perfection so that God would not be angry with me. Jehovah's Witnesses call someone who's not a Witness a 'worldly person.'”
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'I cannot begin to tell you how traumatic it was'
"I am the worst kind of worldly person because I have had the courage – along with all the people brave enough to talk to me for my documentary – to speak out against this religion and say it's dangerous,” Vardy continued.
In Norwich, Norfolk, Vardy was raised in a strict religious household where there were no birthdays or Christmases, and all of her literature and TV were subject to tight censorship. She noted that the elders, who had the authority to exclude members from the society, had complete control over all facets of her life.
"I was petrified, I cannot begin to tell you how traumatic it was when we met up on a Saturday, knowing we were going to be given our service rounds, thinking I might have to knock on the door of someone who was in my class,” Vardy said, adding, “At school, we used to get dragged out of assembly because we couldn't sing the hymns or be present for any reference to religion, to Christian beliefs. If it was someone's birthday, and everyone was singing 'Happy Birthday to You', that was the same, we had to leave. It was humiliating. Mortifying."
Why did Rebekah Vardy move to Oxfordshire?
Life at home was equally challenging for a young Vardy, who went through puberty without any assistance or knowledge of the changes her body was undergoing. "I thought there was something wrong with me, that I was disgusting, that I'd done something wrong,” she recalled. She claimed that the abuse started and continued for three years in Oxfordshire, where she and her mother moved after leaving the JW group in Norwich. When Vardy informed her mother about it, she said that her mother asked an elder for help and they suggested that the young girl "misinterpreted" affectionate touching.
'I could potentially bring shame on my family'
"What happened to me during my childhood still affects me every single day,” Vardy said in the documentary scheduled to air on Tuesday, May 16. "From the age of around 12 years old, I was being abused. And instead of being supported, I was blamed, and manipulated into believing it wasn't the best thing to take it to the police. I told my mum about the abuse that I was experiencing, and she cried. But she didn't believe me. She told numerous members of the Jehovah's Witness community. It was put to me I'd misinterpreted abuse [as] a form of affection. I knew that I hadn't. I was well aware of what was right and what was wrong. And it was explained that I could potentially bring shame on my family,” she continued.
The violence Vardy endured had a lasting effect on her as she tried to kill herself at 14 before being kicked out of her family's home at 15. While her father and sister have left JW, she hasn't spoken to her mother for more than seven years and was unsure if she was still a member, according to The Sun.
