Ashley Judd called out authorities for making her feel “like a suspect” as they interrogated her while she held her dying mom following a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
“I assume they did as they were taught,” the actress, 54, wrote in an op-ed published on The New York Times, talking about the officers who showed up as she held her mom’s “laboring body” and began asking her questions.
Ashley, who was the one to discover her mother following her suicide attempt, continued, “It is now well known that law enforcement personnel should be trained in how to respond to and investigate cases involving trauma, but the men who were present left us feeling stripped of any sensitive boundary, interrogated and, in my case, as if I was a possible suspect in my mother’s suicide.”
Upon discovering her, Ashley wrote that she only wanted to “comfort” her as the musician’s “life was fading.” However, she felt it “mandatory” that she remain with officers and answer their questions, adding that, “many of us are socially conditioned to cooperate with law enforcement.”
“I gushed answers to the many probing questions directed at me in the four interviews the police insisted I do on the very day my mother died — questions I would never have answered on any other day and questions about which I never thought to ask my own questions, including: Is your body camera on? Am I being audio recorded again? Where and how will what I am sharing be stored, used and made available to the public?” the “Double Jeopardy” star wrote.
Ashley was also adamant that the investigative file into Naomi’s death remain private, including family interviews with authorities.
“This profoundly intimate personal and medical information does not belong in the press, on the internet or anywhere except in our memories,” Ashley wrote.
The singer died April 30 after battling mental health troubles for years, with Ashley and sister Wynonna Judd soon after confirming the sad news.
“We are shattered. We are navigating profound grief and know that as we loved her, she was loved by her public. We are in unknown territory,” they said in a joint statement.
