Ellen DeGeneres Recalls Being Sexually Assaulted By Her Stepfather

Ellen DeGeneres recalled her accounts of sexual abuse by her stepfather in an upcoming episode of David Letterman's Netflix series, My Next Guest Needs No Introduction, which drops on Friday (May 31).

In the sit-down chat, the 61-year-old host talked about being assaulted by her mother's then-husband, who has since passed away, when she was just a teenager. Unfortunately, it all started after her mother, Betty, was diagnosed with breast cancer. "He told me when [my mom] was out of town that he'd felt a lump in her breast and needed to feel my breasts," she recalled "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."

Elsewhere in the discussion, DeGeneres reminisced about one time when her stepfather tried to break into her room, prompting her to climb out of a window and flee the house. "He tries to break my door down, and I kicked the window out and ran 'cause I knew it was going to go more to something," she said. "And I didn’t want to tell my mother because I was protecting her and I knew that would ruin her happiness."

DeGeneres first opened up about the abuse during an interview with Allure in 2005, but she said that she wanted to hit on the topic once again to empower other females. "I'm angry at myself because, you know, I didn't, I was too weak to stand up to, I was 15 or 16," DeGeneres admitted. "It's a really horrible, horrible story and the only reason I'm actually going to go into detail about it is because I want other girls to not ever let someone do that. I should never have protected [my mother]. I should have protected myself and I didn't tell her for a few years, and then I told her. And then she didn't believe me, and then she stayed with him for 18 more years and finally left him because he'd changed the story so many times."

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