Melbourne: She may be one of the most influential models of her generation, but Ashley Graham’s rise to fame was marred by a dark childhood memory.

Opening about how a family friend sexually abused her in her upcoming memoir A New Model: What Confidence, Beauty and Power Really Look Like, the Vogue model said an 18-year-old boy forced her to touch his erection while they were drying off after a swim in the pool, News.Com.Au reported. “That’s what you did to me,” the boy told her, before a terrified Graham ran away. She added that it “left me with so many lingering questions.”

Graham reveals the abuse was the start of a number of toxic relationships with older men. “It didn’t matter how inappropriate, unsolicited, or confusing it was, any male attention was good attention as far as I was concerned,” she wrote. After moving to New York to pursue her modelling career, Graham admitted that she was almost fired by her agency for her use of drugs and alcohol. “I hit bottom,” she noted after revealing she had to apologise to her agent after missing a flight to a job because of partying all night.