Shania Twain opens up about ‘very violent’ childhood home: ‘Our house would shake’
Shania Twain is reflecting on the abuse she experienced during her childhood in Ontario, Canada, describing her home as “very violent” and recalling that “our house would shake” during frightening fights between her parents.
On the July 30 episode of NPR’s “Wild Card with Rachel Martin,” Twain, 60, stated that violent confrontations between her mother, Sharon, and stepfather, Jerry Twain, were a regular part of life for her and her sisters, Jill and Carrie Ann.
“They loved each other. They went through many ups and downs together, but they fought a lot, and they got violent often,” Twain said. When asked by host Rachel Martin if she and her sisters were also affected, Twain replied, “Yeah, with me too… If I was standing in the wrong place at the wrong time, definitely.”
Twain further described the treatment she and her sisters received as children, stating, “I mean, both my parents were pretty harsh physically. We definitely got smacked around a lot, and kicked around sometimes, literally kicked around.”
According to Twain, Sharon and Jerry “hurt each other the most.” The country star recalled, “It was very violent. So my mom, you know, she would lose clumps of hair. She was bruised often in the face and … it was pretty bad sometimes. I mean, our house would shake. Those walls would shake… It’s very traumatic. It gets loud and scary, like a really bad thunderstorm.”
Twain added that Sharon made several attempts to leave the relationship, but each effort ended with the family returning. She noted, “My mother did often try to leave. She did leave — we did leave — but he’d always find us, or she’d always give in and go back… It was a cycle.”
Born Eilleen Regina Edwards, Twain was two years old when her mother divorced her biological father, Clarence Edwards. Sharon later married Jerry, who adopted Twain and her sisters. In 1987, Sharon and Jerry died in a head-on car crash near Wawa, Ontario. Twain was 22 at the time, with her music career still in its early stages.
Twain previously discussed the abuse in her 2011 memoir, From This Moment On. In the book, she described an incident in which she struck Jerry with a chair while trying to stop an attack on Sharon, before he punched her in the jaw (per Page Six).
The Grammy winner also accused Jerry of s******* abusing her beginning at age 10. In a 2018 interview with The Guardian, she said, “I feel the s***** abuse goes hand in hand with the physical and psychological abuse when it’s somebody you know. I learned to block it out.”