Mumbai: Ira Khan has said that she was sexually harassed at 14. She made the revelation while talking about the divorce of her parents, Aamir Khan and Reena Dutta, which happened in 2002.
“When I was 14, I was sexually harassed. That was slightly an odd situation as I didn’t know what that person was doing and if they knew what they were doing. It wasn’t happening every day. So it took me a year to be sure that they knew what they are doing and that is what they are doing. My parents got myself out of the situation. Once I was out of the situation, I didn’t feel bad anymore. I wasn’t scared. I felt like this is not happening to me anymore and it’s over. And I moved on. It was not something that has scared me for life and something that could make me feel bad,” Sara said in a new video she posted on Instagram.
“I never spoke to anyone about anything because I assumed that my privilege meant I should handle my stuff on my own, or if there was something bigger, it would make people need a better answer than ‘I don’t know’. It made me feel like I needed a better answer and until I had that answer, my feelings weren’t something I should bother anyone else with. No problem was big enough to ponder too long about,” she continued.
She elucidated on the subject of privileges and how they affected her mental health.
“What would anyone do? I had everything. What would anyone say? I had said it all. I still think there’s a small part of me that thinks I’m making all this up, that I have nothing to feel bad about, that I’m not trying hard enough, that maybe I’m over reacting. Old habits die hard. It takes me feeling my worst to make myself believe that it’s bad enough to take seriously. And no matter how many things I have, how nice to me people are because of my dad, how nice to me people are because they love and care about me, if I feel a certain way, a certain not nice way, then how much can rationally trying to explain these things to myself do? Shouldn’t I instead get up and try and fix things? And if I can’t do that for myself? Shouldn’t I ask for help?,” she added.
Ira also opened up about her parent’s divorce in the video. “When I was small, my parents got divorced. But that didn’t seem like something that would traumatise me because my parents’ divorce was amicable. They are friends, the whole family is still friends. We are not a broken family by any means.”
Ira had posted another video on mental health last month.