CNN – TV dance judge Mary Murphy said singer Chris Brown’s attack on his girlfriend, Rihanna, prompted her to talk publicly about spousal abuse that she says she suffered first as a teenage bride three decades ago.
Murphy — the vivacious judge on Fox TV’s “So You Think You Can Dance” — told CNN’s Larry King that she wants other victims to learn from how she endured, but escaped, domestic violence.
Discovering her talent with dance eventually changed her life and helped her flee the relationship after nine years, she said.
Her ex-husband strongly denied that he ever physically or mentally abused Murphy, whom he married in 1978 soon after they met as teenagers in college.
“I did just tuck it away and just buried it and went on with my life and I thought that, you know, I could leave it there and I wanted to leave it there until my father died a couple years ago,” Murphy said.
