Alexia Umansky disclosed a seven-year-old sexual assault to her father, Mauricio Umansky, for the first time on camera during Thursday’s episode of “Special Forces: World’s Toughest Test.”
The 30-year-old daughter of the “Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” star and the real estate mogul made the revelation while competing alongside Mauricio, 56, on Season 5 of the Fox reality series. She explained to the directing staff that she had joined the grueling competition to prove her courage “after what happened” to her.
Alexia recounted the assault during an emotional exchange with the show’s instructors. “Seven years ago, I was on a trip with some friends, and I was with people I trust. I was put to bed because I had a little too much to drink, and I woke up and I could tell something had happened,” she recalled. She added that she “didn’t even have the power or consciousness to say no” to her assaulter.
The experience left her feeling “completely objectified,” she continued, and she carried “a lot of pain and anger because of that.” She adopted a coping strategy at the one-year mark, deciding that “happiness is a choice, and I was going to choose to put it away. But it still hurts.”
In a confessional segment, Alexia revealed she had never told her family about being “taken advantage of.” She explained her silence by saying, “When you bring other people into it, it just becomes more of a conversation. And maybe a conversation was what I needed, but I just wasn’t ready.”
The breakthrough came when Alexia chose to open up to Mauricio directly, with the other recruits present as witnesses. “You don’t know [this]. I was taken advantage of by a friend,” she told her father. “You guys not knowing is not anything I ever wanted you to know, but I kind of wanted to protect you guys from [it].”
Mauricio appeared puzzled by his daughter’s impulse to shield the family. She clarified, “Once you bring it to other people, it’s hard to … it’s not just yours. I feel like it’s not just your own concern, you know? It just becomes everyone else else’s concern. But I have definitely healed. I’ve come a long way since then.”
Mauricio responded by telling his daughter he loved her. Fellow recruit Candace Cameron Bure thanked Alexia for sharing her story, while Maxim Naumov called the revelation “so f–king powerful.”
Kyle Richards, 57, had previously expressed strong reservations about Alexia participating in the series. She said’s “Virtual Reali-Tea” that she was “not happy” about the decision, quipping, “My first thought was, ‘I’m going to kill you, Mauricio.'” She elaborated, “I was so worried about Alexia. I knew that [Mauricio] would do well or whatever, but I was really worried about my daughter, and I didn’t like that she got sucked into that.”
Mauricio and Alexia’s shared appearance on “Special Forces” marked a rare public collaboration for the father-daughter pair, who have navigated their family’s highly publicized dynamics since Mauricio and Richards separated after 27 years of marriage. The couple also share daughters Sophia, 26, and Portia, 18, while Richards is mother to Farrah Aldjufrie, 37, from her previous marriage to Guraish Aldjufrie.
The disclosure on “Special Forces” represented a significant departure from Alexia’s usual privacy regarding the incident, which occurred during a trip with trusted friends when she was approximately 23 years old. Her decision to share the experience in the high-pressure military training environment underscored her stated motivation of demonstrating resilience and reclaiming agency.
New episodes of “Special Forces: World’s Toughest Test” air Thursdays on Fox.