Paige VanZant Discusses Being Raped and Bullied, Suicidal Thoughts in New Book

UFC women's flyweight fighter Paige VanZant wrote about being raped and bullied during her high school years in her new book releasing Tuesday, Rise: Surviving the Fight of My Life, according to Marc Raimondi of MMAFighting.com.

In the book, she shared the story of how a group of high school boys got her drunk and proceeded to rape her.

"They move me around," she wrote. "They change my position. I fail each time I try to resist, my limbs like wet cement on my body, my brain a heavy fog. I am awake and conscious, but my body feels dead. I know what is happening but can do nothing to stop it. I have no voice or choice but to submit and pray that it ends soon."

VanZant told Good Morning America she contemplated suicide after the assault and spoke about how MMA saved her life:

VanZant wrote that she was incessantly bullied after the incident, as Raimondi noted:

"Rumors spread that she had consensual sex with the boys, rather than that she was raped by them. Born as Paige Sletten, VanZant got called 'Paige Slutton' by schoolmates, prompting her to change her name. Once, she came home and found condoms hung from the trees around her house 'like Christmas ornaments,' she wrote.

"'A huge reason I’m getting the book out is because I want to be an advocate for anti-bullying, I want to be an advocate,' said VanZant, who also wrote about an abusive relationship which led to her getting arrested for DUI. 'That’s the main wave I want to start from this. The hardest thing for me was the bullies. That just really sunk me even lower, that no one was even there for me.'"

VanZant said she had been working on her book before the #MeToo movement, though she was pleased to see various women come forward, including athletes like Aly Raisman, to speak out against sexual harassment and assault. 

"It was totally coincidental and I just couldn’t be more happy with the way it worked out," she noted. "It's like just so comforting that other people kind of took those steps almost before I did, because I'm not the first one. I'm not gonna be the first groundbreaking story. I get to kind of follow and learn from how they did it and see that if they did it, I can do it, too."

VanZant, 24, is 7-4 in her professional career and 4-3 in the UFC, last fighting Jessica-Rose Clark in January at UFC Fight Night: Stephens vs. Choi. She lost that fight by unanimous decision, breaking her arm in the process.

Her next opponent remains undetermined.