Soccer wife Rebekah Vardy details growing up in ‘cult’: It was ‘dangerous’

She’s a media personality, popular WAG and mother of five, and now, Rebekah Vardy is speaking out about the trauma she endured while growing up as a Jehovah’s Witness — an experience she now likens to being in a “cult.”

The 41-year-old media personality, who’s married to English football player Jamie Vardy, has dug deep into her painful past in a documentary for Britain’s Channel 4.

She also took on the role of a reporter for the documentary, interviewing some of her fellow former Jehovah’s Witnesses and attempting to confront the movement at its headquarters in Essex.

“I call it a cult,” Vardy told The Mail on Sunday. “People are manipulated, brainwashed, it’s coercive behavior and it is handed down from generation to generation. Once you’re in it, it’s so hard to see the bigger picture, which is that it’s wrong and immoral.”

Vardy went on to call it “dangerous.”

She revealed that during her childhood there were no birthdays or Christmases.

Books and television programs were censored – if there was a swear word the TV was instantly turned off.

Vardy was not allowed to have other children over to her home to play, and would be removed from school assembly.

“At school we used to get dragged out of assembly because we couldn’t sing the hymns or be present for any reference to religion, to Christian beliefs,” Vardy said.

“If it was someone’s birthday, and everyone was singing ‘Happy Birthday to You’, that was the same, we had to leave. It was humiliating. Mortifying.”

“Elders” judged Vardy and her extended family and could cast people out of their community.

She said this led to her mother hushing up news that Vardy had been sexually abused from the age of 12.

Vardy said she believes her mother kept things quiet because she was afraid of shame being brought onto the family.

“I told my mum about the abuse that I was experiencing, and she cried. But she didn’t believe me,” Vardy said.

She said numerous members of the Jehovah’s Witness community were told and by the time Vardy was a teenager, the group called a meeting.

“It was put to me I’d misinterpreted [as] abuse a form of affection,” Vardy said. I” knew that I hadn’t. I was well aware of what was right and what was wrong. And it was explained that I could potentially bring shame on my family.”

She said she was “basically manipulated into believing it wasn’t the best thing to do to take it any further and take it to the police. The impact on me was wild.”

“I just blamed myself,’ she said. “I felt I hadn’t been good enough, I deserved it. It all goes back to that childhood pattern of seeking perfection.”

It had a huge impact on Vardy, and by the age of 14, she had attempted suicide.

Vardy became homeless after an argument with her family at 15, couch-surfing until she picked up a job that earned her enough money to rent a room in a B&B.

Vardy said she hasn’t spoken to her mother in seven years.

The documentary comes several months after last’s years globally infamous court case, in which Vardy was sued by fellow WAG Coleen Rooney, who accused her of leaking secrets from her private Instagram account.

The court found that Rooney’s statements were “substantially true,” and Vardy lost, receiving a legal bill worth about $5.6 million.

The documentary airs on Tuesday local time.