Married At First Sight Australia bride Lizzie Sobinoff has opened up about being sexually abused as a child and the years of misery and self harm that followed as a result
In a tell-all interview with news.com.au the 28-year-old reality star, who failed to find love on MAFS last year but is returning this year as an “intruder”, revealed to interviewer Tam Wrigley that she was abused for a number of months when she was six years old.
She said she was assaulted by another child her age, and when the symptoms of trauma set in years later she was misdiagnosed with bipolar disorder and depression.
Lizzie has said the child “used to bring me up to my room and shut the door, and touch me, and want to kiss me and things like that, and I hated it.
“I remember afterwards always wanting to have a bath, wanting to scrub myself clean,” the jewellery store manager recalled.
Years later, the enormity of what had happened to her “hit her like a tonne of bricks”, she said.
She didn’t tell her mum until she was in her twenties.
Instead she began self-harming to cope with the trauma. She has claimed doctors diagnosed her with depression and bipolar disorder.
“I was on lithium, I was on everything,” she said.
“I reacted badly to all the medications… I ended up hallucinating… I had drug-induced schizophrenia for close to six years.”
Lizzie said she attempted suicide twice.
Lizzie is joining the 2020 MAFS cast next week (on New Zealand screens), after having a terrible time on the reality show last year.
Not only did her TV husband Sam Ball cheat on her with MAFS bride Ines Basic, he also outraged viewers by body shaming her, saying, “I’ve never really dated girls as big as Elizabeth in the past” and suggesting that he could perhaps “get her running in the morning”.
He even went on to later defend his comments, telling TV WEEK, “That was the honest truth. She’s not a big girl, but she’s just a little bit bigger than girls I normally date.”
Lizzie hit back at the reunion dinner:
“As women, it’s a hard enough time in this life, OK. It’s is a hard enough time.
“We get so much thrown at us. We have men sitting there going, ‘well yeh, you have to be this way, you have to look that way’… I’m not having a bar of it…
“We are expected to look a certain way because of men like that.”
Yet after the show wrapped she completely changed her look, toning down her make-up and hair and revealing a dramatic weight loss transformation.
And now fans are worried she’s lost too much weight, posting their concerns on her Instagram page and telling her she doesn’t look well.
Lizzie and Sam Ball’s TV marriage in last year’s season was a disaster.
Lizzie has revealed that it’s been important to her to return to the show because she never got a fair chance at love last time.
“Everyone saw me being spoken about in not a flattering manner, cheated on and totally disregarded and gaslighted,” Lizzie told TV WEEK. “So everyone’s like, ‘Why would you go back?’
“But I didn’t get to meet anyone. I feel like I went through such a hard time. I want another shot.”
She said being on the show made dating “so hard” afterwards.
She suspected some men dated her just to boost their social media profiles while others expected her to be “a psycho”.
“And then when I’m not, they go, ‘Oh, you’re not that interesting.'”
This time round on MAFS she says she’s just looking for someone “decent, someone who actually will be kind and gentle”.
“That’s kind of sad, but that’s all I ask for – just be kind to me.”
