Bella Thorne Was Only 6: The Disney Star’s Courageous Fight to Overcome Childhood Abuse

Bella Thorne has been unusually frank about the darkest part of her childhood, and she did it in a way most actors never do: through poetry, on the record, and very publicly. If you missed it when it first hit, here is the full, un-sensational timeline of what she shared and how she explained it.

Quick timeline

• 2018: Thorne posts on Instagram that she was sexually abused from as early as she can remember until she was 14, voicing support for Time's Up.
• 2019: She releases her poetry collection, 'The Life of a Wannabe Mogul: Mental Disarray,' where she details the abuse and the fallout.
• 2019: On the BUILD Series, she talks about how the Disney-to-adulthood transition collided with tabloid scrutiny while the abuse was still ongoing.
• Later: In an interview with Logan Paul, she unpacks why she did not recount every detail and how writing the book affected her mental health.
• While promoting the book, she says she identifies as pansexual.

What she wrote in the book

In 'The Life of a Wannabe Mogul: Mental Disarray,' Thorne says the abuse started when she was 6 and continued until she was 14. The poems don’t play coy about how that shaped her. She writes about living with shame and disgust, and about the twisted logic kids use to survive: convincing herself she loved the person hurting her because that was the only way to get through it.

She also turns the blame inward, which a lot of survivors do. In the book, she calls herself out for not stopping it sooner, even framing it as not fighting back hard enough. It is gutting to read, and it is very much written from the point of view of someone unpacking years of self-blame.

Why she did not go to the police

In the book’s later section, she explains why she never filed a complaint. She says the legal system felt stacked against victims and that it often flips the script so the person who was hurt ends up feeling like the villain. She did not want to sit in a room and argue her trauma to be believed.

'I dont want to sit down with the cops and convince them I was raped many times — why should I have to convince someone I was taken advantage of?'

That frustration runs alongside another hard truth she has repeated in interviews: she did not want to relive every detail. She describes having trained her brain not to trigger flashbacks, and going back there, over and over, was not something she was willing to do to herself.

The Instagram post that came first

A year before the book, Thorne told fans on Instagram that she had been sexually and physically abused until age 14. She said she finally got to a point where she locked her door at night and sat by it. That post was also her way of standing with Time’s Up, calling out harassment and abuse in the industry.

Disney fame, cameras, and everything happening at once

On BUILD, Thorne said the transition out of Disney was not some easy off-ramp. While she was still starring on Disney Channel’s 'Shake It Up' (yes, the show she did with Zendaya), the paparazzi were already on her case. She says what people did not see was that the abuse was still happening during that period. Picture being a teenager, chased by photographers, while privately dealing with ongoing trauma. She also adds that people around her saw what was happening and did nothing, which is a brutal thing to carry.

Talking through it with Logan Paul

In a conversation with Logan Paul, Thorne clarified why the book does not spell out every incident. She called herself selfish for refusing to put her mind through those memories again, explaining that she has worked hard not to live in constant flashback mode. Even so, she says writing the book helped her mentally — it helped 'open' her head a bit. She is still looking for answers, and at the time, she hoped the book might be part of that.

Where she is now: identity and personal life

While promoting the book on ABC News, Thorne said she identifies as pansexual — in her words, she is attracted to people, not confined to one gender. As for dating history, she has been linked to Tyler Posey, Mod Sun, Tana Mongeau, and Italian singer Benjamin Mascolo. She is currently engaged to producer Mark Emms.

It is a lot, and it is not easy reading, but Thorne made a deliberate choice to put it out there — raw, imperfect, and in her own format — and that alone is worth noting.