Ashley Judd details how her mom Naomi 'invalidated' her horrific rape at age 14
Ashley Judd detailed the shocking way her mother, Naomi Judd, reacted to finding out she was raped multiple times as a teenager while modeling in Tokyo, Japan.
While appearing on Lifetime's two-night docuseries The Judd Family: Truth Be Told, the actress, 57, opened up about her traumatic experience living as an 'unescorted minor' living by herself in an apartment in Asia.
'When I landed, the modeling agency folks took me to the modeling agency and said, "Take off all your clothes and walk around." I was 14 years old — it was a summer of commercial sexual exploitation,' she recalled.
Ashley continued: 'The head of the agency molested me for the entire summer, a man raped me twice, another model sexually assaulted me. They just consumed my body.'
At one point, she remembered writing in her diary: 'I wanted my teddy bear, I wanted to go to homecoming.'
After returning to her family home in Tennessee, her journal entry prompted an intense conversation with Naomi, who Ashley claimed 'always went through' her things.
'She found my diary and read it,' Ashley said. 'In there, I talked about the times this French guy raped me twice. And [Naomi] got in my sleeping bag and said, "I read about you and your boyfriend."'
Ashley said her accusatory tone was hurtful and made her 'invalidated and denied' her trauma and reality.
'I was a little girl, I was not a participant, I was a victim,' Ashley explained. 'And mom and I had a lot of these conversations later in life and her understanding of sexual assault and rape was not the perspective to which she grew and evolved — but she didn't have that information and perspective. So, her reaction was to sneer at me. I was shut down.'
Ashley, however, pointed out that this would be a 'would be a very painful lament' for Naomi, who died by suicide in 2022.
Ashley did go on to praise her mother for supporting her while accusing disgraced movie mogul, Harvey Weinstein, of sexual harassment and misconduct.
While reflecting on her decision to be named as a source in The New York Times' 2017 exposé against Weinstein, Ashley said her mom told her to 'go get him.'
'She was not fond of Harvey — she called him a not-so-nice word — she called him a pig or something,' Ashley said of her late mom.
In 2018, Ashley was among the first to publicly come forward with allegations against Weinstein, which helped to launch the #MeToo movement.
Her claim was ultimately dismissed by a California court and Weinstein has consistently denied Ashley's allegations.
Back in 2015, Ashley spoke out about being a 'survivor of sexual assault, rape and incest' on X (previously known as Twitter).
'I was sexually abused the first time [when] I was in the second grade and I'm teller. Ha, Harvey knows that,' she said in 2017 at the 11th Annual HOPE Luncheon Seminar.
She continued: 'I went straight to some adults and I said, you know, this just happened, this guy molested me and the adults said, "Oh, that's not what he meant, he's a nice old guy."'
Ashley described herself as a 'three-time rape survivor' in 2019 and revealed that one of her rapes resulted in conception.
'I'm very thankful I was able to access safe and legal abortion because that rapist, who's a Kentuckian – as am I, and I reside in Tennessee – has paternity rights in Kentucky and Tennessee. I would've had to co-parent with a rapist,' she said at the Women in the World Summit in 2019.
In her 2011 memoir, All That Is Bitter and Sweet, she said 'things happened to' her as a kid that she 'never spoke' about, even to her mom or Wynonna.
During her childhood, Ashley attended 13 schools and struggled with depression and loneliness as her mom and sister traveled the world as one of the most commercially successful duo in the history of country music.
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