Ellen DeGeneres’s mother, Betty, has expressed regret over not believing the chat show host’s claims she was sexually abused by her step-dad.
The 61-year-old’s mum at first brushed aside her daughter’s accusations, when she claimed her partner groped her when she was just 15 years old.
The man told Ellen at the time he was looking for ‘lumps’, and Betty has now revealed she has to live with the guilt of not supporting her through the traumatic time for the rest of her life.
Speaking to NBC, the 89-year-old said: ‘I know now that one of the hardest things to do is speak up after being sexually abused. I love my daughter, and I wish I had the capacity to listen to her when she told me what happened.
‘I live with that regret, and I wouldn’t want that for any other parent. If someone in your life has the courage to speak out, please believe them.’
The producer first claimed that her stepfather had abused her during an interview on Netflix’s My Next Guest Needs No Introduction With David Letterman earlier this month, describing how her stepdad would pretend to check her breast for lumps after her mum was diagnosed with breast cancer.
‘Because I didn’t know about bodies, I don’t know that breasts are all different and…,’ she began. ‘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… and I didn’t want to tell my mother cause I was protecting her and I knew that would ruin her happiness.’
Ellen told Betty, about the allegations a few years after it happened, but she didn’t believe her, and chose to stay with her husband – who she did not name – for around 18 years.
‘I’m angry at myself because, you know, I didn’t… I was too weak to stand up to… I was 15 or 16,’ she continued. ‘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, you know, ever let someone do that…
‘I should never have protected her. I should have 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. And finally left him because he’d changed the story so many times.’
The comedian claimed it was only recently that she told her mum she wished she had believed her at the time, something Betty was ‘apologetic’ over.
‘I always have taken care of her my whole life. So I just kept taking care of her,’ she said.
‘I didn’t really let it get to me. Until recently, I kind of went, “I wish I would have been better taken care of. I wish she would have believed me”. And she’s apologetic, but, you know…’
Discussing why she decided to speak out about the abuse, Ellen told David: ‘We [women] just don’t feel like we’re worthy, or we’re scared to have a voice, and we’re scared to say no.
‘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.
‘It is just time for us to have a voice. It’s time for us to have power.
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