Emily Atack has spoken about her sad and difficult youth and revealed she fell pregnant while in an “abusive” relationship when she was 16 years old.
The Rivals actress, 36, has also opened up about being sexually assaulted when she was just 10.
Emily has never spoken about both incidents before but has lifted the lid in a candid new podcast interview.
She says she has been “treated appallingly” by men for much of her life, which brought “loneliness” with it.
Emily Atack on teen pregnancy and sexual assault
Emily spoke about her past traumas while on the How To Fail with Elizabeth Day podcast.
She begins by saying she hung around with “the wrong crowds” when she was a teen.
Emily says: “I was sexually active with older boys and men, and that was very difficult for my parents. I remember when my dad left, and I’ve never actually told anybody this, but I was pregnant and I was very young.
“I was in this awful, abusive, horrible relationship, and I fell pregnant.”
She adds: “I’ve never spoken openly about how or what happened, and I don’t know if I’m ready to yet, but obviously that pregnancy didn’t continue.”
Emily goes on to speak about how she was sexually assaulted when she was 10 years old. She doesn’t name her attacker.
The star, who is now a mum to son Barney, two, admits she has been assaulted multiple times by different men since.
“I was keeping so much from my parents when I was young,” Emily says. “Again, it’s going a little bit dark, but I was sexually assaulted, first of all, when I was 10.
“That was when I was first ever sexually assaulted, and I remember being 10 years old. And from that moment I was treated appallingly by older men from that age, throughout my life.”
Emily explains “loneliness came a lot from that”. She also says her parents are still in the dark about a lot of what has happened to her.
“My parents to this day still don’t know the details of how men have treated me, and touched me, and whispered things to me in my ear when people aren’t in earshot,” admits.
Emily’s Asking For It? documentary
Although Emily has never spoken about her teen pregnancy before, or the sexual assault she endured at 10, she has been frank about other horrible things she has endured.
In 2023, the star presented the documentary Asking for It?. In it, she detailed her own experiences of cyber-flashing and sexual harassment.
She met with experts, including a sexual violence and abuse councillor and online safety campaigners, to try to understand why unwanted attention has become ‘normalised’.
Emily also turned the tables and reached out to men who had been messaging her in the documentary, but only one replied. He told horrified Emily she “comes across as a type of girl who is up for that behaviour”.
“It’s these normalised behaviours that feel impossible to change,” she later said on ITV’s This Morning. “I feel like I am on this crusade now.”
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