|
MUMBAI: In a special interview to NDTV, her only television interview
during her visit to India, Hollywood actor Ashley Judd describes
how her very tough childhood primed her passion for AIDS education
and activism.
As the special guest on NDTV's highly-acclaimed show, 'India Questions',
the award-winning 'Double Jeopardy' actor speaks to fifty young
students about why she prefers fighting for women who are sexually
exploited to being a celebrity. "I much prefer in fact the
Human Rights work that I have been so blessed to have the opportunity
to do, and who could have possibly guessed that Hollywood for me
would be my entry into the slums and brothels."
In this episode of ‘India Questions’ anchored by NDTV’s
Dr. Prannoy Roy, students ask Judd about what she has discovered
during her trip to India (with NGO Population Services International
or PSI) which was spent visiting brothels to educate sex workers
about HIV and AIDS: "In terms of my personal responses to seeing
the vulnerability of girls and women in India, it’s been so
hard, it’s been so hard. You know, one girl or woman, one boy
or man, abused and mistreated to me is the whole world being abused
and mistreated. And I have gone to my hotel room at night and I
have cried and cried and cried."
In an unusually candid discussion, the actor breaks down as she
describes her various meetings with young prostitutes, some who
are not yet teenagers. She attributes her sensitivity to their pain,
to her own childhood which was marked by abuse, poverty, and a severely
dysfunctional family: "I was physically, emotionally, sexually
and spiritually abused, and as a result I was a very damaged, wounded
person...I had a lot of rage. I was a rager as child; I was a rager
as an adult. And you know, its enraging to be abused and to try
to tell people, ‘hello this is happening’ and no one listens.
I used to tear my bedroom apart… And then I would sit and calm
down and I put it back together, knowing full well that I would
tear it back apart sometime soon."
Judd says that after moving around between 13 different schools,
her first experience with stability was her admission into a university
in Kentucky...where she majored in Women's Studies...a course that
she says spiritually awakened her.
Today, she says, after much therapy, and because of her work with
women and children, she has been able to make peace with her past.
"I had the great opportunity to access therapy tools and recovery
tools in order to heal from all of that. And am really glad that
I did…I know that I was drawn to this work partially because,
although this circumstances were different, I identified with what
I saw people going through…I identified with it. And so now
I can truly say that I am so grateful that all those things happened
to me. Were they right? Absolutely not….Should a child go through
that? Of course not…But am glad I did. Because it has helped
my spirit becomes…the spirit that brought me here to India
to work with disempowered girls and women."
Watch the exclusive interview with Ashley Judd on ‘India Questions’
at 9.30 pm on 31 March only on NDTV 24X7.
| 
