Tragic Details About AnnaLynne McCord
The following article includes references to sexual assault, physical abuse, self-harm, and suicide.
Actress AnnaLynne McCord has made a name for herself playing vivacious vixens on TV. You might remember her as Eden on "Nip/Tuck" or Naomi Clark on the CW show "90210," which was a reboot of the hit '90s show "Beverly Hills 90210." However, her most important work is that of an advocate against sexual assault and human trafficking, which was inspired by her traumatic past. "Through pursuing my selfish dream of being a movie star, I discovered my real happiness is being an activist for human rights," she told Beverly Hills Lifestyle Magazine. "My passion project is fighting human trafficking. I have a voice now to speak out on a national and international scale on behalf of these children who are voiceless."
McCord has survived more abuse than most people can imagine; starting from her childhood. Today she is a strong, outspoken individual who is channeling her horrific past experiences into bringing about change. But her road to recovery was a hard and long one. Here are the tragic details of AnnaLynne McCord's life.
AnnaLynne McCord had a strict, controlling upbringing
AnnaLynne McCord grew up in the small city of Monroe, Georgia. In a deeply honest and personal essay written for Cosmopolitan, the actress opened up about growing up in an "extremely religious and conservative family." Her father was a nondenominational Christian pastor and her mother homeschooled McCord and her sisters.
According to McCord, she was deprived of many quintessential childhood experiences due to her family's religious beliefs. She says she and her sisters were rarely allowed to watch TV unless it was old episodes of "Little House on the Prairie." Content like Harry Potter was forbidden because it was about witches and magic. Topics like sex were never talked about, and she was expected to wait until marriage before having her first kiss. "It was like we were living in 1902," she wrote.
McCord was only 15 years old when she left home and moved to Miami to pursue a modeling career. By then, she had finished her homeschooling, and her parents had gotten divorced.
Her parents' punishments were abusive
In her essay for Cosmopolitan, McCord detailed her parents' cruel "painful and ritualistic" punishments. "We would have to bend over the bed, sometimes with our pants down, arms outstretched, and get spanked — with a ruler in our younger years and later with a paddle that my parents bought when they thought the ruler wasn't strong enough," she wrote.
According to McCord, she struggled with the conflicting nature of her parents' actions. On one hand, she felt they loved and supported her and always encouraged her to follow her dreams. On the other, she felt they hated her because of the pain they inflicted on her. The juxtaposition of abuse one day and fun family beach outings the next taught her that this is what love was supposed to feel like. "I would tell myself, 'Maybe it's not so bad,'" she wrote.
McCord understood that in her parents' eyes, they were just disciplining their children and didn't see their actions as abuse. Eventually, McCord's boyfriend encouraged her to confront her parents about her trauma. "I went home and told them, 'What you considered discipline, I considered abuse.' My dad cried; my mom seemed to be in denial. But it was an important step," she wrote.
If you or someone you know may be the victim of child abuse, please contact the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-4-A-Child (1-800-422-4453) or contact their live chat services.
AnnaLynne McCord had unhealthy relationships and views on love
When McCord moved to Miami, she was living with eight other models in an apartment and finally had a sense of freedom. But growing up in a controlling Christian household had warped her beliefs of what constitutes good and bad. She felt guilty for having normal feelings of lust and acting on them. "I became sort of promiscuous but didn't actually have sex. I'd get right there with the guy and then stop, thinking I'd go to hell. Then I'd go to church to cleanse myself," she wrote.
She also found herself seeking out violence in her romantic relationships. She claims she would be violent toward men in order to elicit a violent response from them. "After all, as I had learned in my childhood, people who loved me hurt me," she wrote. "I would slap the guys, antagonize them, until I believed they wanted to hit me. My sexual relationships were dark and violently dramatic."
She also struggled to differentiate between sex and love. "I wanted to be loved. I thought I had to [have] sex with someone to be able to be loved. It was devastating to my soul as a human being to feel I wasn't worthy of love unless someone was taking advantage of my body," she told People.
She was raped by a close friend
When AnnaLynne McCord was 18 years old, she let a friend she trusted spend the night at her place. He had been crashing on a friend's couch and needed a good night's sleep before an important meeting. "When I woke up, he was inside me," she wrote in Cosmopolitan. "At first, I felt so disoriented and numb, I closed my eyes and pretended to be asleep." She explained that she was frozen in fear and didn't want to offend him, which she believed was a product of her childhood trauma. "Because of the physical abuse, I didn't believe there were borders between other people's bodies and my own. I didn't believe I had a voice." It was the fear of contracting a sexually transmitted disease or getting pregnant that gave her the courage to tell him to stop.
The next day, she tried to pretend like nothing happened, and even went to an audition and dinner with friends. She didn't tell anyone what happened. When she ran into her attacker at a club, he denied that the incident wasn't consensual. He even told people she was in love with him. His lies gave her the courage to tell a male friend, her sister, and her boyfriend what happened to her.
If you or anyone you know has been a victim of sexual assault, help is available. Visit the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network website or contact RAINN's National Helpline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).
She used self-harm to cope and blamed herself
After her sexual assault, AnnaLynne McCord put on a false show of strength and tried to go on like nothing had happened. But inside, she was struggling with feelings of guilt. "For 10 years, I thought it was my fault," she told BBC. "I didn't fight back. I found out recently through my studies of neuroscience that my body completely shut everything down and wouldn't let me fight back because I thought that was the only way to cope with abuse." (Note: It is never your fault.) She resorted to self-harm to cope. "I would drive to a secluded place, park underneath a tree, and write dark poetry on my arm, then slice myself with a massively sharp knife, rubbing in the blood," she wrote in Cosmopolitan.
After seeking professional help, McCord finally came to the realization that she wasn't to blame. In her BBC video interview, she purposefully wore a semi-sheer shirt to emphasize a vital point: "How I dress does not mean yes," she said. She dispelled the myth perpetuated by society that sexual assault happens when women put themselves in dangerous situations. "I was never raped in these scenarios they tell you you're going to get raped in," she said. "I was in my own home."
If you or anyone you know has been a victim of sexual assault, help is available. Visit the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network website or contact RAINN's National Helpline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).
AnnaLynne McCord contemplated suicide
AnnaLynne McCord has been open about her suicide ideations following her sexual assault. She never sought help, and a volatile relationship she was in at the time worsened her mental health. While she was in Madrid in her early 20s, she found herself overwhelmed with feelings of loneliness and hopelessness. She stayed in bed for days and eventually contemplated taking her own life. "I ... thought seriously about killing myself. I didn't fear death — it felt like a solution. When you're in that mode, you don't think suicide is a selfish thing to do. You think you're doing everyone a favor," she wrote in Cosmopolitan.
A phone call from her sister changed her mind and saved her life. Her sister hopped on the next flight to Spain to be with her. Eventually, McCord sought professional help and started to deal with what happened to her. "I forgave myself for not standing up for myself, and I began channeling my experience into something good," she wrote.
McCord is referring to her work with human trafficking survivors in Cambodia. Girls as young as 4 are either kidnapped or sold into the sex slavery. "At one of [the] shelters in Cambodia, I met dozens of young survivors," wrote McCord. "They became my friends, my sisters. Through helping them heal, I began to heal myself."
If you or someone you know is struggling or in crisis, help is available. Call or text 988 or chat 988lifeline.org.
She was triggered while filming a 90210 scene
Fans of "90210" probably recall one of the show's most disturbing plotlines. The character Naomi Clark, played by AnnaLynne McCord, is raped by a faculty adviser at school. When a showrunner unveiled the plotline to McCord, she was initially excited to shed light on an important issue. She filmed the assault scene with no issue, but it was the aftermath scene involving a friend who doesn't believe her that triggered McCord. "It was a little too close to real life, sparking my meltdown," she wrote in her Cosmopolitan essay. She also spoke about it to People, saying, "I just broke. ... My heart, which was made to feel like love was a bad, dangerous thing, was just broken."
However, McCord has no regrets because this allowed her to connect with women and other survivors about the issue. "[T]he storyline gave me an opportunity. I talked to viewers about rape, and I heard from young women across the country."
If you or anyone you know has been a victim of sexual assault, help is available. Visit the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network website or contact RAINN's National Helpline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).
AnnaLynne McCord uncovered blocked memories of childhood sexual abuse
When she was 31 years old, AnnaLynne McCord underwent EMDR, which stands for eye movement desensitization and reprocessing and helps people process trauma. During her treatment, she uncovered a repressed memory of childhood sexual abuse. "It was this frozen image in my mind," she told Us Weekly. "I'm being slammed in the face with blackness. ... My clothes are down, it's not good." At first, McCord wasn't sure what she was recalling. With the help of her therapist, she realized that she had blocked out memories of being sexually abused as a child. It started when she was young, and went on until she was 11 years old. "I remembered ... and my whole life changed," she said.
McCord is leaning on the support of her friends, family, and the anti-human trafficking organization Together1Heart, of which she is president. "If I'm hoping to heal from violent energy, I can't do that by responding with more violent or angry energy," she told Us Weekly. "I am love, and I'm [a] storm. We're here to break cycles and break chains."
If you or anyone you know has been a victim of sexual assault, help is available. Visit the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network website or contact RAINN's National Helpline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).
She was diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder
AnnaLynne McCord was diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder (DID). In a conversation with psychiatrist and neuroscientist Dr. Daniel Amen for Amen Clinics, McCord addressed common misconceptions about her diagnosis, which used to be known as multiple personality disorder. "It is not that," she said. "You don't have multiple personalities; you have fragments of yourself. There's AnnaLynne, who you're talking to right now, right? Then there's this part of me that this trauma happened to that's still— if you can imagine it as trapped in Pandora's box. And I just opened Pandora's box."
McCord refers to one of her split identities as "Little Anna", whom she describes as an "anarchist from hell" who helped her get through her trauma. DID is often caused by childhood trauma as a way for the brain to protect itself. She also spoke about the stigma surrounding mental health diagnoses."There is nothing about my journey that I invite shame into anymore," she said. "And that's how we get to the point where we can articulate the nature of these pervasive traumas and stuff, as horrible as they are."
Another one of the DID symptoms that McCord suffers from is gaps in autobiographical memory. "I don't have anything until around 5. Then from 5 to 11, I recount incidents throughout," she said. "Then, when I was 13, I have a singled-out memory that was one thing, but I don't have the sense of anything else at that time."
AnnaLynne McCord sought out complex sexual relationships because of her past
AnnaLynne McCord believes her past sexual trauma is the reason she incorporated BDSM into her sexual relationships, which involves the use of bondage, domination, and sadomasochism during sex. "I was opening up Pandora's box sexually without consciously knowing why I might like these things, why they might turn me on the way they did," she said on the "Call Her Daddy" podcast. "Because our beautiful brains that put pain and pleasure together to try to help us, ended up ... keeping me in a body that would go on to abuse herself for a very long time. ... And a big part of BDSM for me was just trying to feel anything in my body at all."
In an interview with Giddy, the actress credited her on-again, off-again boyfriend, "Prison Break" star Dominic Purcell, as the man who helped her heal her trauma. "Dom created space for me but he called me the f*** out. He did not take bulls***, and that's why I trusted him." she told Giddy's Marissa Sullivan. "I trusted no masculine energies, I trusted no men. Because I figured, 'I'm going to push every f***ing button that you have. And if you cave, I can't trust you.'" Purcell also had a traumatic childhood, and the actress believes they bonded over their similar experiences.