Hayden Panettiere detailed the primary time ex-boyfriend Brian Hickerson got physical in her debut memoir, This Is Me: A Reckoning.
“I hear it before I feel it, the unmistakable sound of an open-hand slap,” Panettiere, 36, wrote within the book, released on Tuesday, May 19. “There’s the burning on my cheek, like I’m on fire. There’s ringing in my head.”
Prior to the incident, Panettiere wrote that Hickerson was screaming in her face. The actress claimed it was rage “like I’ve never seen before.” Panettiere grabbed a pairing knife nearby, but threw it to the side before he hit her.
“None of it happened, no less than for me. If I give it some thought, it’s real. Nevertheless it wasn’t real,” Panettiere wrote. “I can play tough and can it away and it’s gone. Buck it up, then wipe it off the whiteboard and delete it from the tapes. I like this man and this wasn’t him. It couldn’t have been him, not in 1,000,000 years.”
Following that first incident, “the slaps turn into hits,” Panettiere wrote.
“One night he busts up my face so badly I don’t leave the home for weeks. One other day he screams at me to run so far as I can in five seconds because I’ll need a head start before he throws the handheld remote control at me,” she claimed. “This can be a man who doesn’t miss, I believe. And he doesn’t.”
Panettiere and Hickerson were first linked in 2018. He was arrested the next yr following an alleged domestic violence incident against the actress. Hickerson was charged with felony domestic violence and was ordered to steer clear of Panettiere. Those charges were eventually dropped.
He was arrested again in 2020 after one other domestic violence altercation against Panettiere. Hickerson ultimately served 33 days in prison, was placed on 4 years probation and ordered to pay a $500 fantastic.
Panettiere wrote that her family and friends were concerned that she was “in a dangerous situation” during her relationship with Hickerson.
“What I never told them was that the abuse I’d endured didn’t feel as bad because the considered being alone,” she wrote.
Hickerson told TMZ ahead of the book’s release that he and Panettiere have “a mutual respect thing” now. “We’re just good buddies,” he added, calling This Is Me an “incredible” read. Nonetheless, Hickerson did admit that there was one story he asked Panettiere not to incorporate in her book.
“There’s a story where I used to be drunk,” he recalled. “Hayden was standing across and I had a phone in my hand and I said, ‘I’ll offer you 10 seconds to run as fast as you possibly can before I throw it at you.’”
Panettiere reflected on her relationship with Hickerson in her Us Weekly cover story, published earlier this month.
“It was brutal. It was traumatic. It was emotional. It was essential for me to word that have properly,” she said. “I needed to consider that it happened for a reason.”
Panettiere continued, “For something so horrible to occur, the one thing that I could consider to make all of it price it, was [to] let people know that they’re not alone and help people.”
This Is Me is out now.
In the event you or someone you already know is experiencing domestic violence, please call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233 for confidential support.