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Ashley Graham reveals she was sexually harassed on a modelling job

From Harpers Bazaar UK

In her new cover story with Glamour, model Ashley Graham opened up for the first time about how she was sexually harassed during a modeling job in her teen years. The model is 29-years-old now, but that the time of the incident, she was only 17.

She told the magazine:

"There was an incident on set of a campaign job when I was 17 years old-I haven't told this story-and there was a photo assistant who was into me. He was like, "Hey, come here," and he led me into a closet. And I was like, "What?" I thought he was going to show me something. And he pulled me in, and he pulled his penis out. And he was like, "Grab it." And I was like, "No! That's disgusting." I freaked out. And thank God I was closer to the door, and I just bolted out."

La La Land

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To make things worse, Graham didn't tell anyone about the traumatising encounter, and she ended up seeing her harasser again at future modelling gigs. She was even close enough with him that she knew a girl he dated. "I didn't tell her because there was a voice in me that said, "Maybe he's changed." It was my young mentality," she explained.

Unfortunately for Graham, that wasn't even the first time she's been sexually harassed. She was molested when she was 10 years old, when an 18-year-old boy forced her to touch his erection. She was left with "so many lingering questions" she said while recalling the incident in an excerpt from her book, A New Model: What Confidence, Beauty, and Power Really Look Like.

Gearing up for the weekend!!!👙👙👙

A post shared by A S H L E Y G R A H A M (@theashleygraham) on Jun 2, 2017 at 1:03pm PDT

Graham didn't immediately register what had happened to her at the time. She even started questioning if she was to blame. "The insecure girl inside me was like, 'Well, maybe I did something,'" she said.

But now she has the hindsight to understand that being harassed wasn't her fault, and she shows support to other women who may be wondering the same thing. She said: "To all those girls out there: No, you didn't do anything."

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