Oprah: I was raped when I was only 9
By
Jenny Johnson
Behind
Oprah Winfrey’s €2bn net worth are stories of pain, struggle, and eventually triumph.
The media
mogul recounted her own experiences with abuse, which included being raped at
the age of nine, during an appearance at Ball State University, Indiana, part
of a lecture series fellow chat show host David Letterman sponsors at his alma
mater.
“Anybody who
has been verbally abused or physically abused will spend a great deal of their
life rebuilding their esteem,” Winfrey said in front of 3,000 students.
She recounted
being physically beaten as a child, saying it was a cultural experience many
African- American children went through. She also said was raped and molested.
“You’re an
extraordinary person who lived through hell,” said Letterman.
“You were not
consumed, you prevailed.”
Winfrey talked
about some of the positive aspects of her life: How she learned to read before
she was three, how she wished to be Diana Ross, and how she skipped school
because she wrote a note to her teacher.
Description of
her happy times didn’t last, though.
“I grew up in
an environment where children were seen and not heard,” she said.
Letterman
asked her to clarify: “You were struck.”
“Oh, I was
beaten regularly.”
One such
beating, she said, stuck out in vividly in her mind.
“I went to a
well to get some water and carry it in a bucket. And I was playing in the water
with my fingers, and my grandmother had seen me out the window and she didn’t
like it.
“She whipped
me so badly that I had welts on my back and the welts would bleed. And then
when I put on my Sunday dress, I was bleeding from the welts. And then she was
very upset with me because I got blood on the dress.
“So then I got
another whipping for getting blood on the dress,” she said.
The Ball State
Daily News reports that Letterman took Winfrey through each city she lived in
throughout her childhood. At every turn, one story of pain after another
thickened the air with emotion.
At 6, Winfrey
left her grandmother to live with her mother. While there, the woman in charge
of keeping the house forced Winfrey to sleep on the porch. At 9, she was raped.
“He took me to
an ice cream shop — blood still running down my leg — and bought me ice cream.”
Winfrey was
sexually abused from the ages of 10 to 14, when she found out she was pregnant.
It was around this time that her mother took her to a detention home. Too many
girls were housed in the home, so Winfrey couldn’t stay. “My mother said, ‘you
are getting your ass out of this house’,” she said.
So she went to
live with her father, who forbade her from dating, having sex or any deviant
activity. He didn’t know she was pregnant when she moved in.
Two weeks
after she had the child, it died. It was painful, she said, but both Winfrey
and her father saw this as a second chance.
It wasn’t
until she was in an acting workshop this summer that her emotions about the
situation surfaced again.
“I buried all
of my feelings about it.
“I really felt
like that baby’s life — that baby coming into the world — really gave me new
life. That’s how I processed it for myself.”
Even after she
escaped her troubled childhood, Winfrey still faced struggles. When she went to
Chicago, her supervisors said they had no chance to compete against talk show
host Phil Donahue, whom she would eventually take over in ratings.
Through all of
the pain and struggle, Winfrey triumphed. She was thankful, she said, for
everything that had happened. “I would take nothing from my journey.
“Everybody’s
looking for the same thing,” she said, that sense of ‘was I okay?’ That means,
do you hear me and is what I’m saying important to you.’ Everyone is looking
for that validation.
“I know what
it feels like to not be wanted ... you can use it as a stepping stone to build
great empathy for people.”
Winfrey
remained humble when Letterman told her he was impressed with her life. “You
understand that this is stunning,” he said. “Your human existence is stunning.”
“I never
thought of my life as stunning,” she replied. “It’s just my life.”
Letterman
didn’t accept her answer, though.
“Most people
would use this life as an excuse,” he said. “You were not consumed; you
prevailed.”
“I really did
believe there was a power greater than myself...” she said, adding that there
was nothing in her life that she would ever take back. “Everybody has a story
and your story is as equally as valuable and important as my story.
“My story just
helped define and shape me as does everybody’s story.”
The queen of
talk also shared her biggest regret with The Oprah Winfrey Show. “The one thing
I most regret is I wasn’t able to move the needle far enough on abuse in this
country,” she said.
She explained
that too many people still don’t understand sexual abuse is not just about the
act of abuse, but about the misuse of trust and shame that follow.
Never be
ashamed of a scar, it simply means you were stronger than you ever tried to
hurt you.
Stay
strong.
please report
any case of child abuse, cruelty and neglect.
hhcichildren@gmail.com
08138304862
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