Nine years ago, AnnaLynne McCord shared she was sexually assaulted.
In 2012, the 34-year-old actress was hosting an event for the Somaly Mam Foundation, which is dedicated to ending human trafficking and empowering survivors. She hadn't planned on publicly discussing the assault. But as she explained in an interview for Giddy's Bare, she was unexpectedly "thrown out on stage," where she came forward. Cosmopolitan was in the audience, she said, and she shared her experience in a 2014 article for the magazine.
"I was sexually assaulted when I was 19 by a 'friend' who was crashing at my home," she told Giddy's Bare. "I woke up and he was inside me, and I froze. My whole body just froze and I shut down and I didn't know what to do."
McCord threw herself into her work to "pretend like this is not happening."
"Work is an addiction, too," she continued. "And 90 hours a week working, getting a red-eye, going to all these other gigs that I would have scheduled so I never had a moment of stillness so I never had to think about it again."
After experiencing "such severe sexual abuse at such a young age," McCord explained, her "body decided, ‘This is unsafe for you to feel.' So I was completely numb."
The memories of the sexual assault kept coming back. "I was going through severe panic attacks and started to undergo PTSD treatment," she said. "I literally went into bondage, like BDSM—bondage, domination, sadomasochism—because I couldn't feel anything."
At one point during the interview, host Marisa Sullivan asked McCord who was the first man to show her "more beautiful qualities" and "broke through that wall."
"A very, very ferociously strong man," McCord replied, citing Dominic Purcell.
The 90210 alum and the Prison Break actor first sparked romance rumors in 2011. They broke up in 2014 but got back together in 2016, splitting again in 2018.
"There are many reasons why that man forever will be my forever person," McCord said. "Literally, he's staying at my house right now. We're not together….We're family is what it is now."
McCord said Purcell also "went through a lot as a kid" and said he "changed everything " for her.
"A lot of times we attract what we are. And especially if you haven't realized your shadow, if you haven't realized what's underneath the surface, and I had realized absolutely f--king nothing. So, he was a mirror back to me," she said. "So many things that happened to him different versions of the same thing had happened to me and vice versa. Dom created space for me but he called me the f--k out. He did not take bulls--t and that's why I trusted him. I trusted no masculine energies, I trusted no men. Because I figured, ‘I'm going to push every f--king button that you have. And if you cave, I can't trust you.'"
McCord said "you pull people in from the magnetic energetic space that you're in."
"There was a sexual aspect that was underlying that was pulling us," she added, "and we had explosive sex."
To listen to McCord's full interview, click here.