Marcus Mumford has opened up about the sexual abuse he suffered when he was just six years old.
“Like lots of people … I was sexually abused as a child,” he told GQ. “Not by family and not in the church, which might be some people’s assumption. But I hadn’t told anyone about it for 30 years.”
Mumford, 35, addresses the trauma in “Cannibal,” a track on his debut solo album self-titled, due out Sept. 16. He sings: “I can still taste you and I hate it / That wasn’t a choice in the mind of a child and you knew it ... I can still taste you and it kills me / That there's still some sick part of it that thrills me."
Mumford said his mother Eleanor learned of the abuse only after hearing the song and asking about its meaning. “So once we get through the trauma of that moment for her, as a mother, hearing that and her wanting to protect and help and all that stuff,” he said, “it’s objectively f**king hilarious to tell your mom about your abuse in a f**king song, of all things.”
The singer said the sexual abuse sparked “a string of really unusual, unhealthy sexual experiences at a really early age.”
Mumford added: “And for some reason, and I can’t really understand why, I didn’t become a perpetrator of sexual abuse – although I’ve done my fair share of c**tish behaviour.”