Model and TV personality Christine McGuinness has spoken about her harrowing childhood when she was raped as a teenager.
The 34-year-old reality star spoke to the BBC about her adult autism diagnosis and her experience with sexual abuse and said she was sexually abused from the age of nine to 11 and raped when she was a teenager.
While talking about her trauma she said that it left her feeling suicidal and she would pray every night to not wake up in the morning. ‘Just because it was so awful, it was just awful’, she said.
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Christine, who was diagnosed with autism at the age of 33, highlighted in her new documentary how the disorder can make individuals more vulnerable to sexual abuse. One 2022 study, an online survey that spoke to 225 people, suggests nearly nine in 10 autistic women have been victims of ‘sexual violence’, reports the BBC.
Autism is not defined as an illness or a disease, according to the NHS. Instead, an autistic person’s brain works differently than other people’s. One reason why autistic women might be more at risk of sexual abuse is that they’re often left out of friendship groups when they’re growing up, as per clinical research.
