'Hell in Boots: Clawing My Way Through Nine Lives' is available for pre-order now and will be on-sale wherever books are sold Tuesday, March 25.
Saraya held nothing back when detailing some very difficult times in her life, including the traumatizing sexual abuse both she and her brother incurred at a very young age. The culprit, a man who was tasked with watching over them as their parents worked late nights.
It was an experience that both sister and brother buried away, deep inside, for decades.
“I never spoke about it. I never did,” Saraya told The Takedown on SI. "I wanted to forget about it until my brother, Zak, he had a full breakdown one day and he called me and he was like, “Raya, please... we need to talk about this, about what happened. I wanna feel like I'm not crazy.’”
Just a couple of years ago, after Saraya had turned 30 years-old, Zak and herself finally had a long discussion about what had happened to them and unearthed the affect it had on their lives.
It's a shockingly awful highlight of what far too many children are put through each year all over the globe. Upwards of 12 percent of American youth alone have suffered at least one sexual assault. Sometimes, as was in Saraya's case, it happens without their parents ever getting wind of it until it's far too late.
“They were just so supportive and they tried really hard to protect me all my life, but sometimes there's not much you can do.”
Home life growing up in Norwich was anything but typical. An outcast from an early age, Saraya spent many of her days setting up wrestling rings, working her parent's shows, participating in the occasional family bar fight and interacting with a cast of unusual characters. Whether they be an old gypsy woman who predicted her celebrity status from a young age or a mentally disturbed family member whose antics forced her own Mother to disappear for a six-month stretch.
Both Saraya and Zak missed out on an entire year of High School when their Mom vanished without a trace. They were left with no choice but to fend for themselves, keep the family business afloat and care for their father as he drank himself into a crippling state of depression.
She is below average tier in today's era of female wrestling, but they couldn't have her do one story on TV to push the release of her book before she parted? Maybe the Mercedes feud since she is just wrestling randoms with no storyline anyways? The only built-in feud for both of them, and they just didn't do it. How do we get some actual heel heat on Mercedes? Well she tried to end this girl's career, and she's proud of it, and she was doing everyone a favor! Nahhh let's not do that. Typical TK
