Key Takeaways
- Ruby Rose said police questioned her at 15 after she found a critically injured 7-year-old boy at a party and tried to save him.
- Classmates called her a “baby killer” until the boy’s older brother recovered a memory of accidentally causing the fatal incident and told police, clearing Rose.
- Rose shared the story while discussing childhood trauma and estrangement from her mother, themes she also addressed after the death of her friend Hayden Panettiere.
Ruby Rose says she was questioned over a child’s death when she was just 15—a harrowing chapter of her life she revealed during her first-ever podcast interview.
Speaking on Off the Vine With Kaitlyn Bristowe, Rose said an attempt to save a young boy at a party ended with police arriving at her school and other students branding her a killer.
“I first learned about dissociative amnesia when I was 15,” Rose said. “It didn’t happen to me. It happened to a 7-year-old boy, but it ended up with me being accused of murder. I’m not kidding.”
Rose said she had accompanied her mother to an art-gallery event in the Australian bush, where several children were playing outside.
Later that night, Rose and a friend spotted what initially looked like a doll hanging from playground equipment.
As they moved closer, they realized it was a badly injured child. Her friend ran for help while Rose lifted the boy down and carried him toward the adults.
“I thought I’d saved his life because there was a big, deep breath,” Rose recalled.
The child was taken to a hospital but could not be saved. Rose said police subsequently came to her school and questioned her about what happened. As the investigation continued, classmates allegedly taunted her with names including “baby killer,” leaving her “breaking down left, right and center.”
The case was eventually resolved when the boy’s older brother recovered a memory that Rose said he had blocked through dissociative amnesia. According to Rose, the brother remembered pushing the child down a slide and trying to free him after his clothing became caught. He then panicked and ran away, with no memory of the incident for approximately two weeks.
“He finally had the memory, went back to the police and, thank goodness, told them,” Rose said. “Then I was cleared.”
She added that the child’s mother still did not want her at the funeral. “Everyone else went except for me,” she said.
Rose’s disclosure arrives as the former Orange Is the New Black star begins publicly unpacking the childhood trauma and family estrangement she said followed her into adulthood. It also provides context for the unusually forceful role she assumed following the August death of her friend Hayden Panettiere.
After Panettiere’s mother, Lesley Vogel, began discussing her daughter publicly, Rose warned people not to accept Vogel’s account without scrutiny. She later posted private text messages on Threads in which Panettiere described sobbing over her mother’s alleged “cruelty” at 36.
“Right now I feel like a child who wants to find a safe corner to hide in,” Panettiere wrote.
In the messages, Rose told Panettiere that people can remain attached to the idea of motherhood even when their actual mothers have wounded them. Panettiere responded, “All of that lands.”
For her part, Rose told Bristowe that she remained connected to her own mother “for far longer than we should have” because she was unwilling to confront the reality of their relationship.
