Shocking! Padma Lakshmi was physically abused as a child by a relative

In the book `Love, Loss And What We Ate`, Padma Lakshmi has revealed that she was sexually abused as a child by her then step-father`s relative.

Mumbai: Padma Lakshmi has narrated various episodes of her life in a memoir titled 'Love, Loss And What We Ate'. In the book, Lakshmi explained how her former husband and internationally acclaimed author Salman Rushdie treated her and how she was sexually exploited by him.

In the book, Lakshmi has also revealed that she was sexually abused as a child by her then step-father’s relative.

Here’s how she explained the ordeal:

“One night, I woke up to his hand in my underpants. He took my hand and placed it inside his briefs. I don’t know how many times it happened before, since I suspect I slept through some incidents. Once you take a girl’s innocence, you can never get it back. What I remember more is telling my mother what happened and her believing me and then she and I telling someone else that it happened and that person not believing me. And then the next week, I was sent to India. In retrospect however, he should have been the one to go. Years later, in tears, my mother would acknowledge this grave mistake,” DNA quoted excerpts from the book in question.