The Prince of Darkness is opening up about his dark past.
In a candid interview appearing Monday in London’s Daily Mirror, Ozzy Osbourne revealed that he was molested as an 11-year-old schoolboy while growing up in the working-class city of Birmingham, England.
“I was sexually abused when I was a kid,” the heavy-metal icon told the Mirror. “Two boys used to wait for me to come after school. Then they would f-k around with me. They didn’t f-k me, but they messed around with me.
“They would force me to drop my pants and all that s-t. They felt me and touched me…it was terrible,” Osbourne continued. “The first time it happened was in front of my sister, and that affected me even more. It became a regular thing on the way home from school. It seemed to go on forever.”
The Black Sabbath frontman said he never told his parents about the attacks and bottled up the memories for years.
“When I was a kid, people did not talk about these things like they do now. You didn’t have chat shows talking about child molestation,” the rocker said in the interview, which he gave last week before the family’s Thanksgiving dinner.
It was only earlier this year that he finally started to grapple with the incidents, as he underwent therapy while wife Sharon battled cancer earlier this year.
“I worked it out,” he told the Mirror. “But if you have a traumatic experience when you are young, it does f-k you up. Sharon knows all about it, and it was only with her that I could finally relax and be myself.”
Osbourne, who turns 55 on Wednesday, also admitted that between Sharon’s chemotherapy and son Jack’s stint in rehab, he fell off the wagon and nearly lost his marriage.
“I had to physically carry her to the hospital on more than six occasions because she was so f-ked up by the cancer and the chemotherapy,” he said. “I never really stopped drinking, but I started hitting it heavily again while she was fighting the cancer.”
Sharon eventually left Ozzy for four days, and he vowed to stay sober. “I think I have had one glass of wine since,” he said, adding that he “would be long dead” if it weren’t for Sharon.
Osbourne also said he is taking medication to counter his tremors. Doctors have said the shaking, which affects his hands, is not Parkinson’s. Ozzy said the pills he has been prescribed has one big side effect-dry mouth. “It is affecting my singing,” he said. “My mouth just goes.”
Osbourne will embark on his European tour early next year, about the same time MTV unveils the fourth season of The Osbournes.
