Actress Ruby Rose has recalled a brutal homophobic attack by her schoolmates that left her hospitalised as a young teenager.
Ruby shared with the Guardian the physical and verbal bullying she suffered at school after coming out at a young age.
At the time, Rose was living with her single mum Katia in Australia. She said she came out as a lesbian to her mum and schoolmates from age 12.
Sadly, her school peers soon targeted her for her sexuality, excluding her, writing “We hate Ruby” on bathroom walls and accusing her of staring at them in changing rooms.
She said the “horrendous” harassment made her dread and avoid school.
“It was little bullying moments like that, that just made me feel like I couldn’t be myself,” she said.
But the abuse then later escalated, culminating in a violent attack on Rose by several other students outside school.
“I was hospitalised and then was out of school for about five days,” she recalled.
“I got beaten up by about four girls and one guy in front of about 50 people.
“They hit me in the head with metal chairs at a cafe, and they threw things at me. They punched me.”
Ruby Rose changed schools after bullying left her ‘worried for her life’
Ruby Rose said she ended up with “lacerations, big bruises and a concussion” and such a violent attack “horrifies your soul, your spirit.”
“I’d been bullied a lot, but not to this degree where I was worried for my life,” she said.
Rose said not one of the crowd of bystanders did anything to intervene. She said in the years since, she’s received apologies from some of them for their inaction.
She and her mother initially planned to press aggravated assault and grievous bodily harm charges against her attackers.
However she said her family could not afford a long legal fight against multiple people. Rose’s mother Katia also worried about the impact on her teen daughter’s mental health at the time. Instead, she changed schools.
Ruby Rose went on to get modelling work in the early 2000s and got her big break as an MTV host in 2007.
She later became a global star as an actress in Orange is the New Black, several Hollywood films and her one season stint on TV series Batwoman.
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