During an interview with David Letterman, Ellen DeGeneres revealed that she was sexually abused by her stepfather as a teenager.
Ellen said her mom was married to a very bad man. "That’s another thing that, you know, I’m angry at myself for because... I was too weak to stand up – I was 15 or 16 and... I mean, it’s a really horrible, horrible story and the only reason I’m actually gonna go into detail about it is because I want other girls to not, you know, ever let someone do that," Ellen told Letterman.
She spoke of her mother's breast cancer diagnosis and how how her stepfather and her mother had a very sexual relationship.
"And 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.
"Again, ‘cause I didn’t know about bodies, I don’t know that breasts are all different and... anyway, he convinced me that he needs to feel my breasts and then he tries to do it again another time. And then another time, he tried to break my door down, and I kicked the window out and ran ’cause I knew it was gonna do – it was gonna go more to something.
"And I didn’t want to tell my mother, ’cause I was protecting her and I knew that, that would ruin her happiness."
Ellen came clean to her mom about the abuse a few years later but her mom did not believe her. It was only after 18 years - her mother left her stepfather because he had changed his story so many times.
