In an upcoming episode of the Netflix show “My Next Guest Needs No Introduction with David Letterman,” Ellen DeGeneres really opened up about the alleged sexual abuse she suffered as a teenager by her then-stepfather, Entertainment Tonight reports.
Ellen told Letterman how her mother, Betty DeGeneres, got married to “a very bad man” when she was a teen. Soon after, her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer and one of her breasts was removed. She said her stepfather manipulated the surgery and her mother’s diagnosis to sexually assault her multiple times, according to ET.
“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,” Ellen told Letterman, according to ET.
…He convinced me that he needs to feel my breasts and then he tries to do it again another time, and then another time.
Her mother eventually left her husband, now deceased, after he kept changing his side of the story, but Ellen did say she wishes her mother believed her. “I always have taken care of her my whole life. So I just kept taking care of her. I didn’t really let it get to me,” she said, according to ET. “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…”
Such story is surely not an easy one to open up about, but the multiple Emmy-award winner said she is speaking publicly about it to help other victims of sexual assault come forward.
The interview, which airs on Netflix this Friday, is not the first time the star has spoken out about the alleged abuse. She revealed the story in a 2005 interview with “Allure” magazine and also spoke about it in a 2018 interview on her show with “Today” host Savannah Guthrie while discussing Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s allegations against Brett Kavanaugh, then-Supreme Court nominee.
