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Tina Turner’s Upcoming Memoir My Love Story Details Ike Turner’s Sexually Abusive Behavior

These days, when you hear “fighting like Ike and Tina” the phrase doesn’t speak to much more than a lovers’ quarrel. Thanks to the 1993 film What’s Love Got To Do With It, which depicted the famous couple’s toxic relationship, it’s easy to forget that Tina Turner is a survivor who lived through years and years of unbelievable abuse—in real life. It was serious and now in her upcoming memoir My Love Story, excerpted by the Daily Mail, she admits the abuse she endured was even worse than fans ever knew.

Too “embarrassed” to admit how bad things were with her late ex-husband Ike Turner at the time, the icon now says she was also sexually abused during their relationship. Detailing how their marriage began, she wrote in her memoir:

“When Ike Turner proposed, there was nothing romantic about it. ‘You want to marry me?’ he said. Gruff, terse, no niceties. Marriage to me, he thought, was a good manoeuvre. It would help him out of a tricky situation with one of his former wives, who wanted to extract some money from him. Who knows which wife it was. By 1962, Ike had been married so many times, I’d lost track — and all those wives were in addition to the countless girlfriends who came and went with dizzying speed.”

They’d gone to Mexico to marry “because they weren’t fussy about little things like having a marriage license.” After, Ike took Tina to a brothel:

“You see, so long as Ike was in down-and-dirty Tijuana, he wanted to have fun, his kind of fun. So he took me to a whorehouse. On my wedding night. I’ve never, ever, told anyone this story before. I was too embarrassed. What kind of bridegroom takes his brand-new wife to a live pornographic sex show, right after their marriage ceremony? There I sat, in this filthy place, watching Ike out of the corner of my eye, wondering: ‘Does he really like this? How could he?’ It was all so ugly. The male performer was unattractive and seemingly impotent, and the girl — well, let’s just say that what was on display was more gynaecological than erotic. I was miserable, on the verge of tears, but there was no escape. We couldn’t leave until Ike was ready, and he was having a fine old time. The experience was so disturbing that I just scratched it out. By the time we got back to Los Angeles, I’d created a completely different scenario in my head — a romantic elopement. The following day, I was bragging to people: ‘Guess what? Oh, Ike took me to Tijuana. We got married yesterday!’”

Tina also detailed her 1968 suicide attempt, which she says happened on a day she felt insulted and diminished as a human being.

“Why did I snap on an ordinary day in 1968? For starters, there were three women at the house at the time, and Ike was having sex with all of them. Three of us were named Ann — which meant he only had to remember one name. One of the Anns, Ann Thomas, was pregnant with his child — another insult to me. Everything was diminishing — my status, my confidence, my world. One night, just before a gig, I simply couldn’t take any more and swallowed 50 sleeping pills. I knew they’d take time to work, so I calculated that I’d get through the opening number — which meant Ike would still get paid for the booking. I was so well trained that even my suicide had to be convenient for him. The pills, however, kicked in just as I started to put on my make-up, and I ended up being rushed to hospital. As the doctors pumped my stomach, I was fading fast. That’s when Ike moved closer and started speaking to me, probably doing his best imitation of a concerned husband. In my subconscious, I heard the voice of my tormentor, cursing me softly.”

Elsewhere in her memoir, she says sex with her husband was “a kind of rape.”

“In the early Seventies, he started doing cocaine — because someone had told him it would give him more stamina for sex. As if Ike Turner needed to spend another minute on his love life! He was well-endowed, and having sex was practically his full-time job. For me, though, sex with Ike had become an expression of hostility — a kind of rape — especially when it began or ended with a beating. What had been ugly and hateful between us before became worse with every snort of cocaine. He threw hot coffee in my face, giving me third-degree burns. He used my nose as a punching bag so many times that I could taste blood running down my throat when I sang. He broke my jaw. And I couldn’t remember what it was like not to have a black eye. The people closest to us saw what was happening, but they couldn’t stop him: any attempt to help me would make him more violent.”

My Love Story is due October 15. Will you be purchasing a copy?

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