Ellen DeGeneres is opening for the first time about a traumatic experience she says occurred when she was an adolescent.
On a season two episode of Netflix’s My Next Guest Needs No Introduction With David Letterman, the daytime talk show host recalls her mother, Betty DeGeneres, marrying “a very bad man” when Ellen was just a teenager.
Ellen explains that just after Betty married this man, her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer and had one of her breasts removed. Ellen says the man used this information to sexually assault her.
“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,” she tells Letterman.
“I’m angry at myself because, you know, I didn’t — I was too weak to stand up to — I was 15 or 16,” Ellen admits. “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.”
Ellen hopes her story helps other victims of sexual assault to come forward. “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,” she says. “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.”
Ellen further proclaims, “It is just time for us to have a voice. It’s time for us to have power.”
For more of Ellen’s story, as well as her talking about dating guys in high school, coming out as gay and her marriage, check out My Next Guest Needs No Introduction With David Letterman when season two premieres Friday on Netflix.
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