From the first days, the violence was there
A painful past that Cindy Bruna notably recalled in an interview with the magazine SHE. The young woman evokes violence suffered by her mother, and which she attended, totally helpless. “My mother fell in love, she wanted to believe it, even if, from the first days, the violence was there“, she confesses. “The scenes, the insults, the slaps (…) My stepfather also has an addiction to alcohol. My mother puts up with his anger, even when, at the table, he calls her a ‘nigger’. Today I understood that as a black woman she suffered the double harm of sexual and racial violence,” she continues. This second husband, “A business manager“, Cindy Bruna’s mother met him after arriving from Congo, settling in Cagnes-sur-mer and divorcing at 23.
His stepfather’s anger could go very far, even making his wife sleep outside…”Sometimes he throws her outside at night, she sleeps on the terrace and goes back to work the next day, freezing cold. (…) One day, he pretends to burn it with an iron; another he pours washing-up liquid in his tea“, recalls Cindy Bruna. But the deliverance comes when she is 16 years old and her mother decides to react after being taken to the hospital by the firefighters. The long-awaited move finally takes place, a new life begins. Relieved, however, Cindy Bruna is not for the other woman who later married her stepfather, “another Congolese“.
In her interview with ELLE, Cindy Bruna also explains what prompted her to break the silence, years later. “Today I reveal my past for all those who live what I lived and who will be able, I hope, in turn to break the shackles (…) Today, I feel capable of it, even if it is difficult for me to speak in a personal capacity to share my story“, she confides. An experience difficult to forget for the model, who can at least congratulate herself for having shared her story.