Hayden Panettierre Describes Being Put In Bed With 'Very Famous' Man When She Was A Teenager - And What She Did Next

[Warning: Potentially Triggering Content]

Hayden Panettierre is recalling a disturbing situation she says she was placed in at just 18 years old.

While on the Jay Shetty Podcast promoting her upcoming memoir, This Is Me: A Reckoning, the actress was asked by host Jay Shetty about one of the many stories her book. He said:

“You write about a moment in your career where a friend of yours takes you onto a boat. You’re led to a room which has an older man in it and then basically told to perform sexual acts.”

When Jay brought that up, Hayden thinks back to how mature she believed she was back then — even though she was still a teen:

“The fact that I was 18, even though I’d lived such a huge life and I thought I was oh so mature at 18 … scientifically, your frontal lobes don’t develop until we’re what, 25, 26? So even though I felt like I could make healthy decisions, safe decisions, I wasn’t capable of being fully aware of what was going on around me.”

A typical teenager way to think! Everyone thinks they’re grown at 18! It’s so heartbreaking that she didn’t have anyone protecting her vulnerability.

She said that by the time she realized she was “in danger,” her “perspective completely shifted”. But because she was on a ship, it was too late:

“I was quite literally out to sea.”

Oh no…

She said she believed at the time she was just going out to party, and the whole turn of events was “shocking”:

“There was no hints of anything like that happening. So it took me by surprise.”

What made it all the more shocking, though, was that the person who put her in this situation was someone she trusted:

“It was led by somebody that I had grown to trust and see as a protector and somebody who had my back.”

Sickening. So awful.

As for what exactly happened, the Nashville star said she was brought downstairs on the boat to a “very small room” and she was forced into bed next to a “very famous” naked man:

“She physically put me in the bed next to this undressed man who was very famous … [It was] like this was just an average day for him.”

Wow….

Hayden says she was 100% a fighter, though:

“That lion in me, that fire in me … my hair stood on end and I became ferocious. I was like, ‘This is not happening’.”

Sadly, though, she just had to go hide. They were on a boat, there was nothing else she could do:

“There was no jumping off and swimming away. And there was nobody who was going to be empathetic to my situation. I realized that this was nothing new to them.”

That must’ve been a chilling realization… We can’t imagine.

You can listen to her tell her story around the 26:53 mark (below):

We’re so glad Hayden was able to make it out of that situation and is okay today. But we seriously can’t even begin to fathom what kind of trauma she experienced… Our heart goes out to her.

Hayden’s book comes out on May 19. Will U be reading?

[Image via Jay Shetty Podcast/YouTube]