Rebekah Vardy has discussed growing up as a Jehovah's Witness and the alleged sexual abuse she suffered as a child.
In a new Channel 4 documentary, called Rebekah Vardy: Jehovah's Witnesses And Me, the 41-year-old media personality alleges she was sexually abused by an individual who was not a Jehovah's Witness between the ages of 11 to 15. She claims the alleged abuse was covered up by senior male religious leaders, known as "elders".
Vardy, who is married to footballer Jamie Vardy, told ITV's Good Morning Britain on Tuesday that she was "scared of the consequences" of speaking about the alleged sexual abuse at the time due to "the fear of bringing shame onto the family".
In the documentary, she claims that she told her mother, her family and the Jehovah's Witness community about the alleged abuse when she was still a teenager and a meeting was then called.
However, she felt "blamed" by the religious community for the alleged abuse and alleges she was manipulated into not reporting it to the police.
She hopes that her story will show other people that there is a "light at the end of the tunnel".
Vardy told Good Morning Britain: "I think I realised that I've probably only just scratched the surface. I think my story isn't unique and there's going to be plenty of others."
Jehovah's Witnesses is a Christian denomination with about 8.5 million followers worldwide. They believe that the destruction of the world is imminent.
It imposes a strict moral code on members, including that homosexuality is a sin, and punishes those who deviate from the denomination's beliefs by "disfellowshipping" them or ostracising them from the community, which Vardy says happened to her family after her parents divorced.
In the programme, Vardy, who grew up in Norwich, Norfolk, meets former members of the Jehovah's Witnesses, including a victim of child abuse and the mother of a man who died by suicide after being expelled by the organisation.
She believed that she would die at Armageddon if she was not "perfect", and recalls "upsetting" images shown to her depicting the end of the world, which still cause her nightmares as an adult.
In the Good Morning Britain interview, Vardy she felt "isolated and lonely" growing up, as well as being "bullied quite badly as a child because we were made to feel different".
She said: "We had to stand out from everyone else and have really strong [faith], but I lost so much time in my childhood because of this religion and it wasn't pleasant."
In a statement of response to Good Morning Britain, Jehovah's Witnesses said: "Elders are directed to immediately report an allegation of child sexual abuse to authorities, even if there is only one complainant."
Jehovah's Witnesses added that the "courts have rejected the allegation that disfellowshipping and so-called shunning results in social isolation and discrimination and it is simply misleading and discriminatory to imply that our religion is controlling".
It rejected that "being expelled from the religion contributed to suicide".
It also said it "lacked the information to comment on individual cases".
Rebekah Vardy: Jehovah's Witnesses And Me, is on Channel 4 at 10pm on Tuesday.
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Source: Press Association
