Shania Twain has opened up about the violence she says she endured as a child in Ontario, Canada, sharing painful details from her early years in a deeply emotional new interview.
The 60-year-old country-pop star said she grew up witnessing brutal clashes between her mother, Sharon, and her stepfather, Jerry Twain. According to Twain, that violence also reached her and her sisters, Jill and Carrie Ann, who she said were frequently “smacked” and “kicked around.”
“If I was standing in the wrong place at the wrong time, definitely. I mean, both my parents were pretty harsh physically,” Twain said on Thursday’s episode of NPR’s Wild Card with Rachel Martin podcast.
“We definitely got smacked around a lot, and kicked around sometimes, literally kicked around,” she added.
The candid interview comes eight years after Twain previously revealed that Jerry had sexually abused her when she was a child.
Twain also described a home marked by severe financial strain, including food shortages and times when the family could not pay utility bills. She said those money pressures often fueled explosive, physical fights between her parents.
Shania Twain spoke about her traumatic childhood during Thursday’s episode of NPR’s Wild Card with Rachel Martin podcast
The singer said she saw violent fights between her mother, Sharon, and stepfather, Jerry Twain, and that the abuse also affected her and her sisters, Jill and Carrie Ann
‘They loved each other. They went through so many ups and downs together, but they fought a lot, and they got violent often,’ said Twain, who recently hit back at bodyshamers for calling her outfits ‘trashy.’
While she and her sisters were sometimes caught in the crossfire of the arguments, it was her mother and stepdad that always ‘hurt each other the most.’
‘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, who was born Eileen Edwards, said her mother tried to leave her stepdad repeatedly, but the departures never lasted long.
‘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,’ Twain recalled.
Sharon divorced Twain’s biological father Clarence Edwards when the future superstar was two. She later married Jerry, who adopted Twain and her sisters.
Twain was just 22 when Sharon and Jerry were killed in a head-on car crash near Wawa, Ontario, in November 1987, and just as her music career was beginning.
It is not the first time Twain has spoken about the violence within her childhood.
While Twain and her sisters were sometimes caught in the crossfire of the arguments, it was her mother and stepdad that always ‘hurt each other the most,’ she said; Twain is pictured with sister Jill in 2011
‘It was very violent,’ Twain said of living with her volatile parents, who died in a 1987 car crash
‘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,’ Twain recalled
Twain remembered her mom Sharon this past Mother’s Day and credited her for pushing her to pursue a singing career
In her 2011 memoir From This Moment On, the Still the One hitmaker claimed she was abused both emotionally and physically by Jerry for years, and recalled one incident where she tried to stop him after watching him beat up her mother.
‘[I] ran up behind my dad with a chair in both hands and smashed it across his back… Before I could get away, he punched me in the jaw. Adrenaline pumping, I punched him back!’ she wrote.
In 2018, Twain revealed she had also been sexually abused by Jerry during her childhood.
The singer revealed that the abuse started when she was around the age of 10.
She told The Guardian, ‘I feel the sexual abuse goes hand in hand with the physical and psychological abuse when it’s somebody you know. I learned to block it out.
‘Abusers need to manipulate you, whether it’s before or after, and what I said to myself is: “OK, there’s something wrong with this person and that person is not well.’
The harrowing details come after Twain opened up on why she believes her second marriage to Swiss businessman Frederic Thiebaud, 55, will last a lifetime.
The brunette beauty credited her husband of 15 years with resolving issues fast because he’s open with his feelings and wants to talk problems through immediately rather than bury them.
‘He’s really good at reminding both of us that we have to keep communication open,’ said Twain, whose seventh studio album Little Miss Twain was released on July 24.
‘He’s the greatest talker, and he’s not inhibited at all with expressing his feelings, which is really wonderful in a man. If you have a man that is really open and wants to keep the communication open, you’re blessed as a woman.’
Twain wed Thiebaud following her split from Robert ‘Mutt’ Lange over his alleged affair with Thiebaud’s then-wife and Twain’s then-best friend and assistant, Marie-Anne.
The Canadian hitmaker and Lange were separated for two years before their divorce was final in 2010. They have a son, Eja, 25, who they continue to co-parent together.
The Still the One superstar recently shared why she believes her 15-year marriage to Frederic Thiebaud will last a lifetime – because he insists on keeping the lines of communication open; pictured together in 2018
Twain and the former Nestle executive bonded over the heartbreak of their exes’ betrayal. Soon their friendship turned to romance and they wed on New Year’s Day in 2011 in a small sunset beach ceremony in Rincon, Puerto Rico.
Thiebaud is her ‘forever true love… the love I’m going to grow old with, and it’s a beautiful feeling,’ Twain, whose seventh studio album Little Miss Twain was released on July 24, told People.
While she may not have completely forgiven Lange, Twain has learned to let go of the painful past.
‘Forgiveness is in the family of letting go,’ she said in a May 2024 episode of the Great Company with Jamie Laing podcast. ‘But forgiveness, more specifically for me anyway, is not about forgetting necessarily. It’s about understanding the other person, and that might mean that they’re wrong… Maybe you believe forever that whatever they did was wrong.
‘Do I hate my ex-husband for making a mistake? No. It’s his mistake. Not my mistake.’
