Kyle Sandilands shares domestic violence ordeal days after pleading with PM to do more for victims

Kyle Sandilands has opened up about a traumatic experience from his childhood days after making a desperate plea to PM Anthony Albanese.

Kyle Sandilands has opened up about a traumatic experience with domestic violence at the hands of his father when he was just a young boy.

The radio host was candid on The Kyle & Jackie O Show on Thursday morning as he discussed his violent childhood household, days after he pleaded with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to urgently do more for domestic violence victims.

“You’ve got to remember that I was a young child living in a domestic violence situation with my little brother and my mother,” he told co-host Jackie “O” Henderson and newsreader Brooklyn Ross on-air.

Kyle Sandilands opened up about his domestic violence ordeal on Thursday’s show.

“My father would kick off,” he said. “It was horrific. And I would remember I was only really little. And my brother, we’d go into my room and I’d create a land of fantasy in my room with the matchbox cars, and they’d be screaming and things would be smashed. And I would spend all of my time [there].”

Sandilands said he would do everything he could to comfort his little brother, who was four years younger. Whenever he got scared at the sound of broken glass, Sandilands recalled telling his brother that it was just thunder in the game they were playing.

He continued to put on a brave face, saying, “And I was little, I didn’t even know what was going on.”

Co-host Jackie O listened with a sympathetic ear.

The radio personality revealed that while he and his father mended their fractured relationship just before his death in 2016, the psychological effects remain.

“And I don’t like to bring this up because my father is dead now. And we fixed any problems we had and he apologised, but still we had to live with it,” he shared.

“He grabbed my mother by the back of her hair with one hand. And ripped her out of the bath backwards and dragged her kicking and screaming down the hallway in front of two little kids. And I can still see that as if it just happened half an hour ago. These things, they don’t leave little minds. They are in your head forever.”

Sandilands said his father was violent in their home.

Sandilands then revealed to listeners that he was due to call Albanese after Thursday’s show to further discuss the PM’s plan to give victims an immediate $5000 payment to flee their violent homes.

That’s all good and well, the KIIS FM host said, but sometimes the women don’t have access to a bank account.

“You don’t want to put the $5000 into a joint bank account that the bloke has access to,” he said. “A lot has to be done.”

Sandilands (left) with his mum Pam and younger brother Chris. Picture: Ahn Do’s Brush With Fame/ABC

“I know a lot of people are on the side of the victims here, but governments can sometimes try and do the right thing. But at the end of the day, the money must get to the victim. Not stuck in some bank account somewhere.”

On Monday’s show, Sandilands voiced his concerns about the finances or lackthereof of women in domestic violence situations, and said that perhaps creating a safe haven for women to go is better than giving them immediate funds.

“I think the first thing we need to do is make the safe haven a place where a mum can get her kids at three in the morning, ring someone, get picked up and taken away and be safe,” he said on the show.

“I think that’s where it should start because that’s something we can do immediately.”

Originally published as Kyle Sandilands shares domestic violence ordeal days after pleading with PM to do more for victims