Christina Aguilera Discusses Painful Past

Christina Aguilera has always been relatively closed-off when it comes to her personal life, but she is speaking up now about the abuse she and her family dealt with from her now-estranged father, Fausto. Aguilera opened up to E! for a TV special revealing that as a child she, “witnessed a lot of unpleasant things - a lot of pushing and shoving and fighting and quarreling. Growing up I did not feel safe. Feeling powerless is the worst feeling in the world. I turned to singing as an outlet. The pain at home is where my love for music came from.”
Christina, her mother and her sister were all abused physically until they moved in with Christina’s grandmother. Aguilera has chosen not to have contact with her dad, saying, “I let him back into my life briefly but I soon realized that he is not necessary in my life.”

Aguilera's mother, Shelly, describes the extent of the abuse in the documentary, recalling one horrific incident when she found a four-year-old Aguilera with blood dripping from her chin. The singer's mother says, "I scooped her up and said, 'Oh my God. What's wrong?' She told me, 'Daddy wanted to take a nap and I made too much noise.'"

Aguilera's mother eventually fled from her violent husband, taking her daughters to live with their grandmother.

Her father has since begged forgiveness but the pop star has no desire to have a relationship with him, adding, "I let him back into my life briefly but I soon realized that he is not necessary in my life."