Singer, actress and former Miss America, Vanessa Williams, harbored a secret that she could not reveal until now. In a telling interview featured in the latest issue of People Magazine, Williams finally reveals details about the sexual abuse she endured as a child at the hands of another woman. The star insists that the molestation has not “paralyzed” her because she has chosen not to dwell on it, reports the Daily Mail.
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The co-star of the ABC-TV hit series “Desperate Housewives” shared an excerpt from an upcoming memoir “You Have No Idea,” co-authored by her mother Helen Williams.
Williams was 10-years-old when family friends from California came to visit with their 18-year-old daughter Susan. Williams viewed Susan as the epitome of cool because she smoked and drove a car. One night while Williams was asleep, the teen crept into her bed.
Susan pulled down the bloomers of my cotton baby-doll pajamas,” Williams writes. “‘What are you doing?’ I asked. ‘Don’t worry — it’ll feel good.’ I lay there paralyzed. What was I going to do?”
Williams says she decided to keep quiet about what had happened to her until she enrolled in college. The 49-year-old says that she was with a boyfriend when she suddenly realized that she had actually been molested by Susan. Although she kept the sexual abuse hidden for years, Williams says the effects of what had happened were immediately evident in regards to her demeanor and actions. Williams took up smoking marijuana, ignoring her curfews and during high school she had an abortion.
“After that trip I felt something change in me,” she writes. “I had always been defiant but I became a bit more rebellious. I began to pull away from my parents,” she tells People. Williams also states how the incident has helped her to not only be honest but to inform her four children about the realities of sexual molestation and how being verbal about it is the best route to take. She explained, “It was part of my journey that led me to them and to where I am today.”
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