An 18-year-old high school student from a conservative Muslim family in Texas was subjected to years of sexual abuse as a child.
Tara Westover’s ordeal began when she was 7 years old, when she told her parents she was going to be a nurse.
The abuse eventually led to a lifetime of emotional and physical abuse, she said.
Westover told the Houston Chronicle she left the abusive home because she feared for her safety.
The family moved to Oklahoma and then Texas, where she says she began dating men.
“The thing that got me the most was, I didn’t have a father figure,” Westover told The Associated Press.
“I felt like I was trapped in a world where I was supposed to be the protector and the wife, and that was just completely different from being the child that was abandoned.”
After leaving the abusive relationship, Westover began to meet new men, but soon found herself sexually abused again.
“I was very abused by that time,” she said, adding that she was not a “good example” to her peers at school.
The story of Tara Westover is an emotional roller coaster.
But her story has prompted national attention to a growing epidemic of sexual violence in America, with statistics showing that more than 20% of young women are victims of some form of sexual assault each year.
Westmore said she had to face her demons, and she has since returned to her faith.
But the family she left behind is struggling to get back on their feet, and now Westover has found herself on the road to a divorce.
“For years, I felt that I was a victim of some kind of abuse.
I felt trapped in my own body, and I felt as if I was unable to move forward and find happiness,” she told the AP.
“And I wanted to find that happiness.”
