Aamir Khan’s daughter says she was sexually abused as a teen

A month after she opened up about battling depression, actor Aamir Khan’s daughter Ira Khan has said that she was sexually abused as a teen by a person “she kind of knew”.

Speaking about the abuse in a 10-minute Instagram video, Ira said it took her more than a year to know that the abuser knew “exactly what they were doing,” following which she confided in her parents.

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“When I was 14, I was sexually abused. That was a slightly odd situation in the sense that I didn’t know whether the person knew what they were doing, I sort of knew them. It wasn’t happening every day. It took me about a year to be sure that they knew what they were doing and that’s what they were doing. I immediately wrote my parents an email and got myself out of that situation,” the 23-year-old said in a clip on Sunday.

Ira is Aamir’s daughter with his first wife Reena Dutta. Aamir and Reena separated in 2002 after being married for 16 years.

“I wasn’t scared. I felt like this wasn’t happening to me anymore and it is over. I moved on and let go. But it was again not something that has scarred me for life and something that could be making me feel as bad as I was feeling when I was 18-20 years old,” she added.

Just a month ago, Ira had revealed that she had been clinically depressed for more than four years.

She, however, said that her parents’ divorce didn’t “traumatise” her as it was amicable. Aamir Khan and Dutta separated in 2002 after being married for 16 years.

“My parents were very good about being parents to Junaid and me even after divorce and when people would say oh I am so sorry that your parents got divorced, I would be like why? It’s not a bad thing.”

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Ira said the divorce of one’s parents could be damaging for children but it wasn’t something that scarred her. “I remember most of it, but it felt like my parents’ divorce didn’t bother me. So, that can’t be a reason why I was feeling so sad.”

Ira said she kept wondering why was she feeling depressed despite being fairly privileged. She said when she felt suffocated or cried, she didn’t reach out to her closed ones as she didn’t want to burden them.

“(I thought) It’s not like anyone can help me through this because there’s no reason for me to feel like this, because nothing bad has happened to me. I shouldn’t feel like this. I don’t have any reason to feel like this.” “And so my own sense of privilege, my own sense of feeling that I had to have a good enough reason to feel like this made me not talk to anyone,” she added.