Ellen DeGeneres Opens Up About Childhood Sexual Abuse

Ellen DeGeneres shared traumatic memories of her teenage in an interview with David Letterman for his Netflix show "My Next Guest Needs No Introduction." She said her stepfather felt her breast while her mother was out of town and her mother didn't believe her and stayed with him for another 18 years.

DeGeneres mentioned that the abuse started after her mother, Betty, was diagnosed with breast cancer, "He told me when [my mom] was out of town that he'd felt a lump in her breast and needed to feel my breasts, 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." She said he tried again several times, until one time when "he tried to break my door down, and I kicked the window out and ran".

"I'm angry at myself because, you know, I didn't, I was too weak to stand up to, I was 15 or 16, 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," the TV show host said. She encouraged other survivors not to suffer in silence. "When I see people speaking out, especially now, it angers me when victims aren't believed because we just don't make stuff up."

DeGeneres had talked about being sexually harassed when she was younger, while showing public support last year for Dr Christine Ford and her accusations against then Supreme Court Judge nominee Brett Kavanaugh but this time she went into details of the "horrible story."

The comedian said she did not tell her mother at first because she didn't want to agitate her. "I should never have protected her, 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," DeGeneres said. She explained that her mother did ultimately left him because he kept changing his version of events.

"And I like men, but there are so many men that get away with so much," she added. Barack Obama awarded his last Presidential Medals of Freedom to Ellen DeGeneres. Obama praised the talk show host for risking her career to come out as a lesbian at a time when the LGBTQ community in the U.S. was struggling to find a place in mainstream culture.