While addressing the guests at the launch of her Pamela Anderson Foundation in Cannes on Friday the famed Playboy model told the crowd she was molested and gang raped in her youth which led to suicidal thoughts.
“I did not have an easy childhood,” said Anderson, 46. “Despite loving parents, I was molested from age six by a female babysitter.”
Anderson shocked her audience when she revealed that her “first heterosexual experience” was six years later when a board game turned into a vicious rape.
“I went to a friend’s boyfriend’s house and his older brother decided to teach me backgammon which led into a back massage, which led into rape,” she said. “He was 25-years-old and I was 12.”
But perhaps the mother-of-two’s most shocking revelation was the gang rape she endured as a teen by a school boyfriend and a half-dozen of his mates.
“[The boyfriend] decided it would be funny to gang-rape me with six friends,” Anderson said. “I wanted off this earth.”
The woman who grew up to become the biggest sex symbol in the world used the buzz surrounding the French film festival as a platform to launch her own charity dedicated to the environment, human rights and animal rights.
The TV star said that after her abuse she had lost all faith in humanity and retreated into the friendship of animals.
“I had a hard time trusting humans,” she said. “My loyalty was to the animal kingdom. I vowed to protect them and only them.”
Pamela Anderson with British designer, Vivienne Westwood while attending the launch of Anderson’s charity in Cannes on Friday.
Anderson’s blunt memories of rape and abuse not only drew audible gasps from the audience but managed to blindside some of her closest industry pals including famed designer, Vivienne Westwood – who considers Pamela a close friend and muse.
“I did not know she had been through all of that,” Westwood told The Guardian newspaper. “I have known her a long time now and we are really close.”
