The US television host Ellen DeGeneres has spoken out about the sexual abuse she says she endured at the hands of her stepfather when she was a teenager.
The star detailed how her stepfather would use her mother’s cancer diagnosis to manipulate her into allowing him to repeatedly grope her breasts.
Speaking on David Letterman’s Netflix show, My Next Guest Needs No Introduction, DeGeneres said her mother Betty had married “a very bad man”.
The 61-year-old said: “He told me when she was out of town that 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.
“He convinced me that he needs to feel my breasts and then 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,” she continued. “And I didn’t want to tell my mother because I was protecting her and I knew that would ruin her happiness.”
DeGeneres said she decided to talk about it openly so other young girls would be brave enough to speak out.
“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 said.
“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.
“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.
“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.
“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.”
The TV personality said she did not tell her mother about what had happened at first.
When she finally did a few years later, she said her mother did not believe her, and stayed married to the man for 18 more years.
Her mother finally left him after he kept changing his story, DeGeneres said.
