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Ashley Judd has called for greater privacy protections for bereaved families after she says she was left feeling like “a possible suspect” during police interviews after her mother’s suicide.
The Heat actor, 54, spoke out about the unimaginable torment she went through this spring when she found her mother, Grammy-winning country star Naomi Judd, with a self-inflicted gunshot wound at the singer’s home in Nashville. In a powerful personal essay, published Wednesday in the New York Times, Ashley called April 30 “the most shattering day of my life.”
“The trauma of discovering and then holding her laboring body haunts my nights,” Judd wrote. Last week, a report from the Nashville medical examiner said that Naomi died from a gunshot wound to the head, and that she had lived with a “significant” history of anxiety, depression, and bipolar disorder. The report added that Ashley found her mother while badly wounded along with a “note with suicidal connotations” and a gun nearby, The Guardian reports.