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Actress Tisha Campbell gets even more honest about the traumas of childhood rape when she details being assaulted when she was just three years old.
Campbell bravely told her story on TV One’s original auto-biographical series “Uncensored.” Along with detailing all the other adversities she’s had to overcome, one of the most devastating moments came when she described one traumatic day involving a babysitter.
“So it was a babysitter, someone very close to us,” she started. “I remember us watching T.V. and I was a yeller. I can’t remember which brother had a butterknife but to me it was a knife, and I said, ‘Put that knife down!’ And the babysitter said, ‘I told you if you yell one more time, you’re going to get it.’ So I thought I was getting a spanking. He said, ‘Get in the room.'”
Campbell then went into graphic details about how the babysitter ordered her to take off her clothes.
“He left the room for a second and I was so scared I was shaking. And I remember him bringing back Crisco.” What followed was Campbell’s emotional account of the assault. “I remember my spirit escaping my body and hovering over and watching what was happening, and I felt myself hurl myself into a corner and ball up and I think I blacked out.”
You can watch the devastating, graphic details below.
Campbell first revealed that she was raped back in 2014. In a talk with the daytime advice show “The Daily Helpline,” Campbell offered advice to a 20-year-old guest who was experiencing binge eating and alcohol addiction after being sexually assaulted when she was 12.
“You can no longer be a victim, you have to be victorious at this point,” Campbell told the woman. “You can’t play the victim cause at this point, I’m not saying this to put you down or anything. What I’m saying is he’s winning, and you’re allowing him to win. You are making a conscious decision to harm yourself, to hurt yourself and allow this person to still have dominion over your life. You can’t do that anymore.”
Campbell continued, “The reason why I can absolutely say this to you without judgment or anything else, and this is the first time that I’ve admitted this on camera in front of millions, national, people, is that I too have been a victim of the same thing. When I was three, I was raped by an older person. Now I knew as a child that I did nothing wrong and that this wasn’t my fault, but I have found forgiveness in the guilt that I might’ve had.”
She goes on to say, “Now that’s not to say that it didn’t affect me because as a mom, I wasn’t able to breastfeed my first child because I felt like I was doing something wrong and so I had to stop that. But I got past that. Any challenge that’s in my way, I move into it and I fight through it.”
Campbell ended by saying that years later, the person who raped her contacted her to apologize. “I am blessed enough to have had the opportunity for the person who did this to me to apologize. And this just happened a couple of months ago. I received a letter from prison and he apologized for what he did and I found so much relief and forgiveness.”
Of course, there’s more to the story along with the other ups and downs of Campbell’s life, including her star rolls in shows like “Martin” as well as her unexpected experience with autism.
You can learn more about Arnold’s journey on the season two premiere of “Uncensored” airing Sunday, October 6 at 9 p.m. ET/8C on TV One.
