Alan Ritchson opened up about being sexually assaulted during a photoshoot, an incident which led to him quitting the modelling industry all together.
via: Page Six
“I hung myself,” the actor, who has appeared in series such as “Blue Mountain State,” “Smallville” and “Black Mirror,” and currently stars in Prime Video’s “Reacher,” told the Hollywood Reporter in a profile published Wednesday.
His attempt took place in the attic of his Encino, Calif. home with a green extension cord. “It all happened so fast, and I was dangling there,” he recalled.
However, Ritchson made a last-minute decision to pull himself up before he blacked out after he saw a vision of his sons, Calem, 11, Edan, 10, and Amory, 8, in their mid-30s.
“They calmly asked me not to do it, and told me that they wanted me to be here, alive and part of their lives,” he noted. He shares his sons with his wife of nearly 20 years, Catherine Ritchson.
Ritchson, 41, said he sought help immediately after the alarming incident, which led to his bipolar diagnosis at age 36. A few years later, at the age of 40, he learned he had been living with ADHD as well.
His suicide attempt came after years of sexual assaults that followed him from the modeling industry into the acting world and “broke” him, he explained to THR.
“There are very few redeeming qualities to working in [the modeling] industry. Let’s be honest, it’s like legalized sex trafficking,” he claimed. “The industry is not regulated, and it’s a widely known secret that if you’re hired on a job, you’re basically being passed off to a photographer to be trafficked.”
“The number of times and situations where I was put in horrific environments where sexual abuse was the goal and the paycheck that you were desperate for in order to survive was the carrot, I can’t count on two hands. It was quite often.”
One alleged incident led the father of three to quit the modeling world forever.
As someone who has followed Alan's career since he played Aquaman on Smallville, I am beyond gutted that he had to go through this. I'm glad that after the success of Reacher that his career as an actor is finally taking off.
I'm also hoping he will become Batman in James Gunn's DCU, which he recently said in the same interview that he would love to play the caped crusader.
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