Brooke Hogan alleges she was ‘verbally, mentally abused’ by parents

Brooke Hogan — the actor and reality-star daughter of Hulk Hogan and his first wife, Linda — accused her parents of abuse Wednesday after her mom posted a video of herself sobbing over her dysfunctional family.

“I have to be honest about what I went through in my marriage with Terry as Hulk Hogan and what it entailed and what it has caused over the years and everything else,” Linda said. “He’s a complete liar. He is a sex addict. Yet he marches on.”

Linda Hogan said she had never put out a Facebook post like this one, in a since-expired Story, showing her “ugly face” and “crying face” on camera. She said it had been years since she spoke with her 36-year-old daughter.

“She’s had twins. She got married, she didn’t tell us; she had twins, she didn’t tell us,” Linda said. “She had a huge fight with Terry. I don’t know how that reflected onto me, but she cut me out too. I haven’t talked to her for seven years, almost eight years now.” (Brooke married former NHL player Steven Oleksy in 2022; they welcomed twins in January.)

Linda said she had given Hulk Hogan — real name Terry Bollea — “more opportunities to come back and make us a family” and then she dissolved into more tears. “I’m sorry, it’s so sad. And it’s been 20 years, and I’m still this sad. Somebody please explain that. I don’t know, it just doesn’t get better.”

The family reality show “Hogan Knows Best” went off the air in 2007 and spinoff “Brooke Knows Best” ended in 2009

Hulk, 71, and Linda, 65, split up in 2007 after nearly 24 years of marriage and two children: Brooke and son Nick, 34. She said she filed for divorce after finding out he had an affair with their daughter’s former best friend. He’s been married twice since then, considered suicide, sued Gawker into bankruptcy after it published a recording of him having sex with a friend’s wife and enthusiastically supported Donald Trump for president.

Linda’s video didn’t seem to elicit a reaction from him, but it got one from Brooke Hogan. On Instagram, she said people had found it concerning enough to send it to her.

“I have been EXTREMELY verbally and mentally abused since childhood,” the actor-singer-reality star wrote Thursday. “Sadly, it would frequently turn physical. And sometimes it’s not by the person you would assume, abuse comes in all shapes and sizes. This vicious pattern has robbed me of any sense of self-esteem or confidence I’ve been trained to pretend to have.”

She said that up until she was an adult, she had “received berating and vile text messages, verbal, public reamings with unbelievably hurtful words said to me that cannot be forgotten.”

“I’ve been ASKED to defend poor behavior to the public and have done so out of love, only to find I was misinformed, manipulated, and lied to. Still to this day I face constant ridicule for those poor decisions of others. I’ve watched others benefit financially off my suffering and embarrassment caused by their selfish behavior. While it caused my life to crumble, I continued to stay strong and silent.

“I was expected to — and DID forgive massive blows to my career and personal life, nasty behavior, omissions of truth, blatant lies, manipulation, and repetitive errors in hopes of renewing previous family bonds. I’ve been used as a pawn, a buffer, and been treated like I’m downright stupid too. No child or human should ever experience something like this.”

Brooke said she had set boundaries that hadn’t been respected and badly wanted to see the good in her parents. She said other people witnessed this behavior but never spoke up, perhaps not wanting to get caught in the crossfire.

“I can’t blame them,” she wrote. “My family is very skilled at war.”

Brooke said both parents had given her many reasons for her decision to end contact, despite loving them both deeply, and said she had “repeatedly held my hand out to help them, only to have them pull me into the darkness with them.”

“I have been to therapy, I am doing the work. I am breaking the chain. It ends with ME,” she said, noting later that she wanted the “false narrative” to end too.

Linda Hogan must have seen or heard about Brooke’s post, because she responded on Friday via Facebook.

“Seems narcissism runs deep in this family. Brooke is a narcissist just like her dad ..going out .. spewing lies to everyone and I’m supposed to defend my truth against that. I’m not about to do that… it seems to me that she doesn’t want the truth being revealed to her new [husband] and his family about who she was and things in her past!”

Linda said she spanked Brooke once and called her a couple of names, but gave the kids cellphones and didn’t treat her daughter the way Brooke had characterized. And she threatened to take her daughter to court.

“She could’ve posted horrible things about me back when all of this was supposedly happening, but … she didn’t because nothing was happening, but when she took her dad‘s side after the divorce and wrote the wonderful Mom song [“Dear Mom”] and went to all the tabloids because Terry was using her as a tool.. her memory is completely skewed about the treatment that she received growing up in our household, and you can talk to anyone. You can ask anybody you can ask Terry .. that none of the stuff ever happened.

“It’s her angle to keep her family away from her now, revealing who she used to be after drinking a half a bottle of vodka. She was so drunk she broke my collarbone and cut my lip and insisted everyone take her to the hospital because she was poisoned and she wasn’t. She was just drunk … there’s many stories like that. I’m not gonna go on, but I’m not gonna defend myself against these ridiculous allegations. I’ll do that in court if she keeps it up.”

Hours later, Brooke responded with another Instagram post.

“First of all, it appears my mother may not have actually read what I wrote,” Brooke wrote before laying out a couple of examples of her mom making what she calls “false claims” about never meeting Oleksy and not having spoken to her for years,

“My post did not directly accuse anyone of the behaviors mentioned. So if she’s triggered by something, I think that speaks volumes. She is however making a serious accusation against me directly that has zero validity. And THAT I take seriously. … I showed compassion for her in my post. At this point, I think her response says more about her than it does about me.”

Representatives for Brooke, Linda and Hulk Hogan did not respond immediately Friday to The Times’ requests for comment.