Teen Mom 2 star Kailyn Lowry has opened up about how she was brutally raped when she was younger – and left with injuries so bad she had to be hospitalized.
In her new book Hustle & Heart, the 24-year-old relives the shocking attack in horrifying detail.
“A guy who’d been asking me out for a while showed up at my apartment plastered,” Lowry writes in the new book, according to Radar Online.
“He said he needed to talk to me. I let him in. He grabbed me, dragged me into the bedroom and forced me down.”
The mother-of-two tried to fight back but said her attacker – who she named as Caleb – was too “strong and rough”.
She added: “And when he left me, my body torn and my sheets stained with blood, I felt like I was dead.”
In the book, which will be released later this month, she goes on to describe how she was taken to hospital after the rape.
“The doctors stitched me up …the pain was unbearable,” she revealed. “It was obvious what had happened to me.”
“And yet I wouldn’t agree to a rape kit. I was shaken and afraid and overwhelmed by chaotic ideas of what would happen if I accused Caleb of rape. I couldn’t stand to think about the consequences.”
“Even as it ate away at me, I tried to pretend it had never happened. I tried to escape into a reality in which I wasn’t a victim.”
Now the reality star wishes she had reported the incident – and regrets not coming forward at the time.
“If only I had stood up for myself, raised my voice and backed up my beliefs,” she said. “If only I’d been living proof of the fact that no victim should live in shame.
“Then I could have turned what happened into a source of strength. I could be looking back now and feeling proud of myself.”