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Celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay has shared how his daughter, Holly, has been coping since her sexual assault and the role the family played in her healing from the experience.
Earlier this year Holly (21) revealed that she was sexually assaulted twice when she first started studying fashion design at London’s Ravensbourne University.
Now Gordon is opening up about how Holly worked through the traumatic experience and how he came to understand what his daughter had gone through.
“Holly has had a very difficult time,” he tells Mail Online in a new interview.
“Now she is in an amazing position, and she has dealt with those issues.”
The 54-year-old says lockdown helped the family support Holly in what he calls a “healing process”.
“The pandemic, from a dad’s point of view, was perfect timing because we got to spend quality time together, and we got to understand what she’s gone through,” he adds.
“She’s absolutely fine now. There was a healing process.”
Holly launched a podcast called 21 & Over with Holly Ramsay, along with psychotherapist Talitha Fosh, to break the stigma around mental health.
In the first episode, the 21-year-old opens up about her mental-health journey, revealing she began experiencing feelings of depression when she was 13.
"I remember having prolonged
feelings of being quite sad and feeling just generally quite empty, as if I was
just going through day by day and not feeling much joy. But I was just a
teenager so I thought that this was completely normal," she says.
"The idea of depression was quite a taboo, no one really spoke about it at all."
Looking back on her childhood, Holly says she’s always struggled with anxiety but didn't have a name for what she was experiencing.
"I never knew that it was anxiety, I just thought I was shy compared to my siblings.”
During the candid conversation with Talitha, Holly also admits to suffering from PTSD after the sexual assault.
She claims she hid the attacks from her family for a year and spent three months at the Nightingale Hospital in Marylebone, London.
“I went to university, studied fashion design and I loved it. But by the second half of the first year I was being affected by my PTSD and I had no idea that this was happening.
“I was going out a lot and missing class because I’d been out. I wasn’t enjoying myself at all. I was struggling a lot. The PTSD was a result of two sexual assaults when I was 18. I didn’t tell anyone about it until a year afterwards. I just buried it in a box in the back of my mind.
“That was where I was diagnosed with PTSD, anxiety and depression.
“Since then, I have been in therapy up to three times a week. I now have these diagnoses that I carry around with me.
“It’s confusing and I’m trying to take control of my narrative and use that to make something good.”
Holly, who is studying at the Condé Nast
College of Fashion & Design in London, says opening up about the ordeal
brought her closer to her family.
Her dad, Gordon, and mom, fellow chef Tana Ramsay (46), are also parents to Oscar (2), Matilda (19), twin Jack (21) and Megan (23).
“I’ve lost friends,” Holly says. “It’s definitely a journey. But I hope that by speaking out I can help other people.”
Sources: dailymail.co.uk, mirror.co.uk, metro.co.uk, standard.co.uk, today.com
