"Duck Dynasty" star Jep Robertson revealed he was sexually abused as a child.
Robertson discussed the abuse during a candid interview with "Entertainment Tonight" with his wife, Jessica, by his side. The 37-year-old A&E reality star and the youngest son of "Duck Dynasty" patriarch Phil Robertson said it began 31 years ago at the hands of an older female student while on the school bus. He started pretending he was sick so he could stay home from school.
"I was 6, and it was on a school bus and it was an older girl," he told ET. "Back then, the high-school students would ride on the same bus as the grade school. There was this girl there that was just real mean ... I don't know, but it a lot of things took place -- scary stuff. It was tough."
He goes into further detail in The Good, the Bad, and the Grace of God: What Honesty and Pain Taught Us About Faith, Family, and Forgiveness, a book he cowrote with his wife. One of the chapters is titled "The School Bus."
An older girl started sitting next to me. She seemed sweet at first. She'd come sit beside me, like a motherly figure almost. I remember her being sweet and taking care of me. I liked to sit in the back so she'd come sit with me ... After a while the girl started doing strange things. She'd take my hands and push them up under her shirt and tell me I was tickling her. Then she started making me pull down my pants. It was awkward. I didn't know what was going on, but I knew something wasn't right.
He describes how the abuser "tortured" and "hurt" him. The abuse allegedly occurred "regularly," despite his efforts to move to another seat or sit near the driver, and left him "confused and scared."
Jep and Jessica Robertson also discussed the child molestation exposé involving fellow reality family the Duggars. Josh Duggar sexually molested five underage girls when he was a teenager, some of whom included his sisters. The story unfolded in the press following InTouch's exclusive story, with advertisers pulling out of the TLC show, and the Robertsons said they can commiserate. (In 2013, Phil Robertson came under fire after saying being gay is sin comparable to bestiality.)
"They seem like a great family," Jessica told ET. "I sympathize with going through hard times in the media."
A spokesperson for A&E was not immediately available to comment.