Dax Shepard has unveiled a heartbreaking truth about his childhood in a recent interview, claiming that he was sexually abused at a young age by a neighbour - something that took him more than a decade to open up to anyone about but also something that he attributes as a root to his drug addiction.

Dax ShepardDax Shepard abused at 7-years-old

The 41-year-old 'Parenthood' actor told Australian radio host and MMA fighter Jason Ellis about his ordeal in an interview on his show on Sirius XM. 'Yeah, I was molested', he said. 'Not to the degree or extent you were.'

Asked who perpetrated the attack, Shepard replied: 'A dude in my neighborhood... I was 7 and this dude was probably 18.' He added that the abuse was 'minimal', but it still took him eleven to twelve years to tell anyone about it. 'I was like it's my fault, as generic as that is, it's my fault and I'm gay, I must've manifested this 'cause I'm secretly gay', he said. 'I had all these insane thoughts for eleven years or twelve years.'

He also agreed that he understood what had happened from the start, after being asked by Ellis. The radio host himself is known to have been sexually abused by his father at a very young age, though he only discovered that it was his father and not a neighbour who molested him after extensive therapy.

Shepard now puts his past addictions to drugs and alcohol down to his childhood trauma. 'My mom is a court-appointed advocate for kids in foster care', he explained. 'She called me not too long ago and said, 'I was just in a seminar this weekend and I learned that if you've been molested, you only have a 20% chance of not being an addict'. 

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'In my mind I just like to f***ing have a great time. But when you hear a statistic like that, I'm like 'Oh no, I was gonna be an addict, period'. That was gonna happen.'

The actor has been completedly sober since 2004, and has been married to Kristen Bell since 2013. They have two children; 3-year-old Lincoln and 1-year-old Delta.