Anica Milenkovic: “Yes, He Beat Me for Three Years”

Anica Milenkovic used her appearance on the Amidzi Show to confirm, for the first time in public, what had long been the subject of rumor. Asked directly by the host whether her partner had beaten her, the singer did not dodge the question.

“Yes! He beat me for three years,” Anica Milenkovic said on the Amidzi Show.

With that single answer she put an end to years of speculation about her private life. The abuse, she confirmed, lasted three years.

Stepping away from the spotlight and moving to America

After a successful career on the domestic pop scene, Anica stepped back from performing, got married and moved to America. A new chapter began there that she had never spoken about publicly, even as audiences at home still pictured her the way they remembered her from television.

To keep a roof over her head and provide for her children, she took on jobs that almost no public figure from the Serbian scene would ever mention. Looking back on that period now, she says, she feels no bitterness.

“I did everything myself. Now, looking back from where I stand today, none of it felt hard. At first anything new seems difficult, you wonder if you’ll manage, but you get used to it. It’s all part of life, it’s good to learn, the more things you know the better,” Anica Milenkovic said on the Amidzi Show.

Cleaning houses, caring for the elderly, then behind the wheel of a truck

In America, Anica’s jobs ranged from cleaning houses and caring for elderly people to driving a freight truck. She spent the last two and a half years of her time there behind the wheel.

“The truck was the last two and a half years. It was nice, big, different. A person has to try everything, we shouldn’t tie ourselves to just one job, because you never know what might happen to you. I also cleaned houses, took care of elderly people… That period of my life brings back my best memories, because working with those people taught me so much,” Anica Milenkovic said on the Amidzi Show.

For the singer, physical labor was never something to be ashamed of, not while she was one of the better known performers on the scene, and not later, far away from the cameras.

“There’s no shame in doing any kind of work,” Anica Milenkovic said on the Amidzi Show.

What is known, and what remains unsaid

Anica did not say in the interview when the abuse started or when it ended, and she did not name the partner who, according to her, beat her for three years. She also did not say exactly when she left for America or when she returned. What she did lay out was the order of events: first she left the stage, then she got married and moved, then came a string of jobs, the last of which, for two and a half years, was driving a truck.

The admission came at a moment when Anica Milenkovic is once again present on the domestic scene, in a conversation where she chose to speak about what she had kept quiet before. For audiences who remember her from earlier performances and from the entertainment pages, this account changes the picture of the years she spent away from Serbia.

The Amidzi Show gave viewers one of the rare moments in which a singer returning after a long break from the stage speaks openly both about violence in a relationship and about a life the public did not expect from her, one that included cleaning other people’s houses and driving a truck instead of performing and shooting music videos.