Grammy-winning singer Shania Twain revealed that she grew up in a "very violent" home in Ontario, Canada, where she and her sisters experienced physical abuse. Twain, 60, shared details of her childhood in a recent interview, stating that she and her sisters, Jill and Carrie Ann, regularly witnessed fights between their mother, Sharon, and stepfather, Jerry Twain.
Twain described the domestic environment as traumatic, recalling that the violence often shook their home. "They loved each other. They went through so many ups and downs together, but they fought a lot, and they got violent often," she told NPR's "Wild Card with Rachel Martin." When asked if the violence extended to the children, Twain confirmed, "Yeah, with me too."
She elaborated that she and her sisters were "kicked around" at times. "If I was standing in the wrong place at the wrong time, definitely," Twain said. "I mean, both my parents were pretty harsh physically. We definitely got smacked around a lot, and kicked around sometimes, literally kicked around."
Twain, born Eilleen Edwards, said her mother often bore the brunt of the abuse, with Twain recalling instances of her mother losing clumps of hair and being bruised. "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," she recalled.
Her mother made multiple attempts to leave the abusive situation, but the family remained. "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," Twain explained. "It was a cycle."
Twain's parents, Sharon and Jerry Twain, adopted her and her sisters after her biological father divorced her mother when Twain was two. Tragically, her mother and stepfather were killed in a head-on car crash in Ontario on November 1, 1987, as Twain's music career was beginning.
The singer has previously spoken about her upbringing, notably in her 2011 memoir "From This Moment On." In the book, she alleged that Jerry Twain physically and emotionally abused her, and she witnessed him repeatedly beat her mother. Twain recounted an incident where she intervened by hitting Jerry Twain with a chair as he attacked her mother, only to be punched in the jaw herself.
Further allegations include sexual abuse by Jerry Twain, which Twain stated began when she was 10 years old. Speaking to The Guardian in 2018, she commented, "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."