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Last month, FKA Twigs went public with accusations of physical, mental and emotional abuse towards her ex-boyfriend, actor Shia LaBeouf, whom she is currently suing.
The lawsuit, which also includes abuse allegations from another of LaBeouf’s former girlfriends, Karolyn Pho, states, “Shia LaBeouf hurts women. He uses them. He abuses them, both physically and mentally. He is dangerous.” In it, Twigs alleges LaBeouf of sexual battery ranging from verbal abuse to violent attacks and physical strangulation.
Now, in a new interview with Louis Theroux for the podcast Grounded, Twigs reveals that she was “left with PTSD” (post-traumatic stress disorder) after she finally ended things with LaBeouf and that during the nearly year-long relationship she was forced to kiss LaBeouf a certain amount of times a day to prove her love and wasn’t allowed to talk to or look at other men in the eye.
“For me it was being nice to a waiter or being polite to somebody that could be seen as me flirting or want to engage in some sort of relationship with somebody else when I’m literally just ordering pasta and being polite,” the 33-year-old told Theroux.
“I was told that I knew what he was like, and if I loved him I wouldn’t look men in the eye. So that was my reality for a good four months towards the end of the relationship, that I wasn’t allowed to look men in the eye.”
Twigs said she had to meet a daily quota of affection towards LaBeouf, meaning that she had to kiss him a certain number of times every day and repeat how much she cared for him. None of this would appease her then boyfriend, who would still wake her up in the night “to accuse me of all sorts of things”.
“[He would] accuse me of staring at the ceiling and thinking about ways to leave him… accusing me of wanting to be with somebody else but it would be, always – I’d say between like four and seven in the morning,” Twigs said. “For a long time anything that woke me up in the night, even if it was just my dog, or a noise outside, or just needing to go to the bathroom, it could trigger a really intense panic attack.”
Eventually, Twigs says she called an abuse helpline which served as a “massive wake-up call” that prompted her to leave, however, she’s still suffering from PTSD and says that society doesn’t discuss enough how difficult and long the process of healing from trauma is.
“[It] is just something that I don’t think we really talk about as a society just in terms of the healing when leaving, and how much work that has to be done to recover, to get back to the person that you were before,” she said.
In a statement released in December in response to the lawsuit, LaBeouf said: “I’m not in any position to tell anyone how my behaviour made them feel. I have no excuses for my alcoholism or aggression, only rationalisations.
“I have been abusive to myself and everyone around me for years. I have a history of hurting the people closest to me. I’m ashamed of that history and am sorry to those I hurt. There is nothing else I can really say.”
