Shania Twain was sexually abused by her stepfather from the age of 10

She said of the abuse: "Physically and psychologically. Oh yes, sexually. Uh huh, uh huh. I'm not going to go into details about it.

"I don't mind saying it, because I do think it's important that people understand you can survive these things.

"[It started] around the age of 10."

The 52-year-old singer - who opened up about the physical abuse in her 2011 memoir - learned to "block out" her stepfather's actions and was able to get through her ordeal by reassuring herself that Jerry was "not well".

She added to The Guardian newspaper: "I feel the sexual abuse goes hand in hand with the physical and psychological abuse when it's somebody you know. I learned to block it out.

"Abusers need to manipulate you, whether it's before or after, and what I said to myself is: 'OK, there's something wrong with this person and that person is not well.' "

The 'Man! I Feel Like A Woman' singer didn't want to speak out about the abuse at the time because she worried it would break up her family, which included her two sisters, a half-brother and Jerry's nephew.

She admitted: "I did feel sorry for myself a lot as a kid. It was either go to Children's Aid and get saved now or ... I weighed it up and thought: 'If I go to Children's Aid, we'll all get separated,' and I just couldn't bear that, so we all stayed together for better or for worse."

Shania - who never knew her biological father - saw a number of violent fights between Jerry and Sharon and lived in fear that one of them would end up dead.

She said: "I was worried about my father killing my mother. I thought they'd kill each other. My mom was quite violent, too.

"Many nights I went to bed thinking: 'Don't go to sleep, don't go to sleep, wait till they are sleeping.' And I would wake up and make sure everybody was breathing."