Actress and former Miss America Vanessa Williams gave a powerful testimony on Oprah’s Master Class about her experience being molested by an 18-year-old girl when she was only 10-years-old and how it affected her psychologically.
The traumatic incident occurred the summer before she entered 5th grade when a much older ‘cool girl’ performed oral sex on her while she was taying with her friend’s family’s friends in California.
‘She was one of the cool girls,’ said Williams. ‘She made you want to feel like you were a grown-up.’
One night when Williams and her friend were sleeping, the older girl snuck quietly into their room and woke Vanessa with a strange request.
‘She told me to lie down on the floor. She took my bottoms off and she said, ‘Be quiet,’ Williams says. ‘She went down on me.’
Vanessa says that she couldn’t really understand what was happening, but knew it was wrong.
‘I had no idea what it was, but I knew it felt good,’ she says.’I knew it felt good, but was also something that was not supposed to be happening.’
Although she knew it was wrong, she never told her parents about what happened because the moment she stepped off the plane she learned of a family tragedy and didn’t have the courage to bring it up.
‘I saw my dad’s face and his face was gray. And I just found out that his brother had died,’ she recalls.
Vanessa Williams says she wished she could had the innocent experience of having her first kiss at 16 but that being molested made her act out sexually at a young age.
‘It awakens your sexuality at an age where it shouldn’t be awakened,’ said Williams.
‘Had that not happened in my life and had I had an opportunity to have a normal courtship with a boyfriend at 16 or whatever… there wouldn’t have been that shame that was always haunting me. It made me more sexually promiscuous and more sexually curious at a younger age than I should have been.’
Watch the clip below to see what else Vanessa had to share about her harrowing experience.
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