LOS ANGELES, May 29, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – US talkshow queen Ellen DeGeneres has
opened up to late night talk show host David Letterman about being sexually
assaulted as a teen by her mother’s then-husband.
The daytime talk show host recounts in an upcoming episode of Letterman’s
Netflix show “My Next Guest Needs No Introduction” that the abuse took place
when she was 15 or 16, after her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer.
“It’s a really horrible, horrible story and the only reason I’m actually
going to go into detail about it is because I want other girls to not ever
let someone do that,” DeGeneres says in the episode airing Friday.
She explained that her stepfather, who is deceased, first assaulted her
when her mother was out of town, telling DeGeneres that he needed to feel her
breasts to make sure she had no lumps.
“He told me… he’d felt a lump in her breast and needed to feel my breasts
because he didn’t want to upset her, but he needed to feel mine,” she said,
according to excerpts of the interview with Letterman carried by US media.
“Again, because I didn’t know about bodies. I don’t know that breasts are
all different.
“Anyway, he convinced me that he needs to feel my breasts and then he tries
to do it again another time, and then another time he tries to break my door
down and I kicked the window out and ran ’cause I knew it was going to go
more to something.”
DeGeneres said she did not talk about the abuse with her mother at first,
afraid it would ruin her happiness.
“I should never have protected her,” DeGeneres said. “I should’ve protected
myself, and I didn’t tell her for a few years and then I told her, and then
she didn’t believe me and then she stayed with him for 18 more years.”
She said her mother finally left her stepfather after he changed his
version of the story many times.
DeGeneres said she was speaking out about the abuse to inspire other women
to come forward.
“That’s the only reason I think it’s important to talk about it, because
there’s so many young girls and it doesn’t matter how old you are,” she said.
“When I see people speaking out, especially now, it angers me when victims
aren’t believed, because we just don’t make stuff up.
“And I like men, but there are so many men that get away with so much.”
DeGeneres, who came out as gay in 1997, first spoke about the abuse in a
2005 interview with Allure, clarifying at the time that the assaults did not
influence her sexual orientation.