Vanessa Williams has recently appeared on Oprah’s Master Class to discuss how she was sexually molested by an older girl when she was 10-years-old.
The former Miss America bravely opened up about the abuse she endured at the hands of a teenage family friend while on a summer holiday, which made her “more sexually promiscuous and more sexually curious at a younger age.”
The actress, 51, said the 18-year-old girl came into her room while everyone was asleep.
“She told me to lie down on the floor,” Williams said. “She took my bottoms off and she said, ‘Be quiet.’ … She went down on me.”
Being so young Williams revealed she struggled to understand what was happening.
“I had no idea what it was, but I knew it felt good,” Williams said. “I knew it felt good, but (was) also something that was not supposed to be happening.”
The Ugly Betty star also discussed how she felt groomed by her abuser.
“(She) was one of the cool girls. … She made you want to feel like you were a grown-up.”
After the incident Williams says she wanted to tell her parents but shortly after they returned home from the holiday there was a family tragedy.
“I saw my dad’s face and his face was grey. And I just found out that his brother had died,” she said. “That was a family drama. I never really talked to my dad about it. I kind of suppressed it.”
Williams said the molestation has had a long lasting effect on her life.
“It awakens your sexuality at an age where it shouldn’t be awakened,” she said.
“Had that not happened in my life and had I had an opportunity to have a normal courtship with a boyfriend at 16 or whatever. … There wouldn’t have been that shame that was always haunting me.
While many celebrities might seem like they live an enchanted life some have travelled bumpy roads before becoming famous.
Oprah, Teri Hatcher and Tyler Perry have all bravely spoken out about their experiences with sexual abuse in a bid to raise awareness and help others.
Vanessa Williams says because of her molestation her sexuality was “awakened” at an age it shouldn’t have been.
Throughout her career Oprah Winfrey has been an advocate for sexual abuse survivors because their stories hit close to home for the TV queen.
While doing a TV special with sexual abuse victims and their molesters in the late ’80s Winfrey revealed she had been raped by a relative when she was 9 years old.
American actor, producer and screenwriter Tyler Perry says he suffered so much physical, emotional and sexual abuse growing up her tried to take his own life at age 11.
In an interview with Oprah Winfrey, Perry, 44, once described his childhood in New Orleans as “a living hell” and says he was molested by several different perpetrators, both men and women, because he was so vulnerable and “predators know when a child is an easy mark.”
Perry credits his younger self for being strong enough to endure the painful past and survive. “He had no help. He just had to walk through it. So he gave birth to the man I am. I owe him to live the best life I can. I owe him to be the best father that I will be someday. I owe him to use my life and my words and my work to encourage, to inspire, to do what you did for me,” he told Oprah.
Ashley Judd revealed in her 2011 book, All That Is Bitter & Sweet, the multiple accounts of sexual abuse she suffered as a child. The actress says her country singer mother, Naomi Judd, lead a life that exposed the actress to a life of sexual impropriety at a young age which ultimately lead to her being molested by a man she described as being an “abusive full-blown heroin addict with a criminal record.” Judd also wrote she was a victim of incest but did not name her attacker. Judd USA Today back in 2011 she felt a tremendous amount of healing sharing her story with people she came across in her charity work. “I was really encouraged by people I trust to include some of my own story, because why I love [humanitarian] work really baffled people, and so I eventually got willing to put it in there.”
In 2006 Teri Hatcher told Vanity Fair she was molested by an uncle at just 5-years-old. “This is something I’ve tried to hide my whole life,” she told the magazine. However, the actress, 49, said she felt compelled to speak out after learning that a 14-year-old victim of her uncle had taken their life. Her uncle, Richard Hayes Stone, later pleaded guilty to four counts of child molestation and was sentenced to 14 years in prison. The district attorney prosecuting the case told the Associated Press after the trial that “without Teri, this case would have been dismissed.”
Irish actor Gabriel Byrne spoke out in 2010 about how he was molested at age 11 as an altar boy while at a religious school in Ireland. “It was a known and admitted fact of life amongst us that there was this particular man, and you didn’t want to be left in the dressing room with him,” Byrne told the Irish television show. “There were certain boundaries, sexual boundaries, [that] were crossed. And it was mixed up with fear and ultimately with shame.” The 64-year-old actor opened up about the abuse on Irish TV show “The Meaning of Life” says he didn’t understand what impact it had on him immediately. “I didn’t feel I suffered at the time. I just felt it was the way of the world,” Byrne said “It took many years to come to terms with it and to forgive those incidents that I felt had deeply hurt me.”
In May former Baywatch star Pamela Anderson gave a harrowing account of the sexual abuse she suffered as a child and revealed she was gang-raped as a teen. “I did not have an easy childhood,” said Anderson, 47. “Despite loving parents, I was molested from age six by a female babysitter.” The famed Playboy model made the revelations of the gang-rape public while addressing guests at the launch of her Pamela Anderson Foundation in Cannes and said the attack left her feeling suicidal. “[The boyfriend] decided it would be funny to gang-rape me with six friends,” Anderson said. “I wanted off this earth.”
Queen Latifah opened up to Essence magazine in 2009 about her sexual abuse as a child and believes the experience left her with long lasting emotional issues. “He violated me,” she said of her alleged abuser. “I never told anybody; I just buried it as deeply as I could and kept people at an arm’s distance. I never really let a person get too close to me. I could have been married years ago, but I had a commitment issue.”
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