Nikki Haley Opens Up About Child Abuse [Video]

Nikki Haley opened up about her own personal experience with child abuse today as she stressed the importance of the Silent Tears study.

Haley told reporters at a press conference today that she was physically abused by a day care provider when she was a child. The South Carolina Governor said that her family didn’t know how to deal with the issue when they found out that she was being abused.

Haley said: “It doesn’t matter your background, it doesn’t matter your education, it doesn’t matter the wealth of your family. Every child is subject to child abuse … When it happened to me, my parents didn’t know what to do. They didn’t know who to go to. No one knew how to handle it.”

The State reports that Haley’s mother worked a full-time job while raising three kids. In order to juggle all of her obligations she turned to a neighbor to watch her kids during the day. Governor Haley said that she never told her mother about the child abuse but that she eventually figured out something was wrong when Nikki was reluctant to leave her side.

Haley said: “I never wanted to go but she didn’t know quite what it was and didn’t think anything of it … One day I came home and I had a lot of bruises and a lot of issues.”

The governor focused opened up about her past with child abuse during a press conference on the Silent Tears study, a 336 page page report that includes several suggestions for how South Carolina can handle future cases. The report was created by the National Child Protection Training Center of child sex abuse in South Carolina.

Here’s a video of Nikki Haley talking about her past with child abuse.