It has been 15 years since Lauren Kavanaugh’s mother and step-father were sentenced to life in prison for illegally imprisoning her in a trash-and-faeces-covered closet for six years when she was just a child.
According to CBS, Lauren was abused, starved and beaten by Barbara Atkinson and Kenny Atkinson when she was as young as four years old.
Now, more than a decade after the harrowing ordeal, Lauren has opened up about the aftermath of the shocking events that ultimately broke her childhood.
“Life’s been pretty hard; I’ve been struggling a lot,” she told Dr Phil.
“I hardly sleep anymore. My anxiety is terrible.”
Not only that, but the tortured 23-year-old admits that she has attempted to take her own life more than 30 times and she would go as long as months without leaving the house.
“Sometimes I’d have flashbacks about my past, my childhood. Sometimes when I have flashbacks, it’s of [my parents] beating me. Hitting me, yelling at me, beating me…”
“I can’t listen to country music because that’s all they ever played to drown out my screaming. When I hear it, it just all comes back.”
Having admitted that, in the past, she struggled with alcohol and drug addiction, and now fights depression every day, Lauren is trying to put her horrific past behind her with the help of her fiancé Janae Merrill.
“If we are somewhere that doesn’t have a closet, she will go to the shower, turn on the scalding hot water and sleep in there,” Janae says.
Our thoughts are with Lauren, who certainly has an unimaginably tough journey ahead of her.
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