Marcus Mumford says he was sexually abused as a child.
Marcus Mumford was sexually abused as a child
The Mumford and Son frontman revealed that he is a survivor of sexual abuse after an unnamed individual took advantage of him when he was six-years-old.
The 35-year-old musician told GQ magazine: “Like lots of people – and I’m learning more and more about this as we go and as I play it to people – I was sexually abused as a child. Not by family and not in the church, which might be some people’s assumption. But I hadn’t told anyone about it for 30 years.”
Marcus - who is married to actress Carrie Mulligan, 37, with who he has son Wilfred, five, and daughter Evelyn, six - hit “rock bottom” when he finished his 2018 ‘Delta’ tour with the band he hit it big with.
He continued: “I’d had the people closest to me hold up a mirror and say, like, ‘Dude, something’s not right here and it’s your responsibility to go figure it out.’ ”
The ‘Cannibal’ hitmaker went to therapy and had the “very common” symptom of vomiting during his second session.
Marcus said: “Apparently, it’s very common
“Once you basically unhook the denial and start the process of removing some suppression, then it’s very natural for that stuff to come out. I’d had problems breathing all my life. Not asthma but just, like, catching my breath.”
The ‘Little Lion Man’ singer described his ordeal as a kid as “the first of a string of really unusual, unhealthy sexual experiences at a really early age. And for some reason, and I can’t really understand why, I didn’t become a perpetrator of sexual abuse – although I’ve done my fair share of c****** behaviour.”
Until now, Marcus said he has been living in layers of shame. And it probably started there when I was six, but I just got kind of addicted to shame, layers and layers of shame, which is why I feel now like I’ve done lots of figuring that out.
“And some of the areas in which I was trying to make that shame go away just led to more shame for me. And now being able to pick those apart a little bit and, like, chip away at the layers of it is why I feel kind of free, more free than I have in a long time.”
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