talkshow queen Ellen DeGeneres has opened up to late night talk show anchor David Letterman about being sexually assaulted as an adolescent by her mom’s then-spouse.
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 clarified that her stepfather, who is expired, first struck her when her mom was away, disclosing to DeGeneres that he expected to feel her breasts to ensure she had no bumps.
“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 didn’t discuss the maltreatment with her mom at first, afraid it would demolish her lif satisfaction and 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 mom at long last left her stepfather after he changed his variant of the story many times.
DeGeneres said she was standing up about the maltreatment to inspire other ladies to approach about these issues.
