Mariska Hargitay shares emotional essay on sexual assault

Mariska Hargitay could have years of expertise enjoying a detective who helps search justice for survivors of rape and sexual assault on tv, however till lately she had a tough time processing that a part of her personal identification. This revelation comes from a private essay that the Regulation & Order: Particular Victims Unit actor penned for Individuals, wherein she reveals that she was raped by a person she thought-about a buddy whereas in her thirties. “It wasn’t sexual in any respect. It was dominance and management. Overpowering management,” she opens.

After the incident, Hargitay “couldn’t imagine that it occurred” so she “reduce it out” and “eliminated it from [her] narrative,” she writes. She explains that this acutely aware denial is what she needed to do to outlive.

Within the meantime, the actor began a company to assist different survivors of assault and abuse known as Joyful Coronary heart Basis. “I used to be constructing Joyful Coronary heart on the surface so I might do the work on the within. I feel I additionally wanted to see what therapeutic might appear like,” she explains. “I look again on speeches the place I stated, ‘I’m not a survivor.’ I wasn’t being untruthful; it wasn’t how I considered myself.”

After years of this work and a few light assist from family and friends to call what occurred to her, Hargitay stated she was lastly in a position to have “my very own reckoning.”

The actor additionally acknowledges the facility of the neighborhood that’s grown round SVU and particularly her character Olivia Benson:

Survivors who’ve watched the present have informed me I’ve helped them and given them energy. However they’re those who’ve been a supply of energy for me. They’ve skilled darkness and cruelty, an utter disregard for one more human being, and so they’ve completed what they wanted to outlive. For some, meaning making Olivia Benson an enormous a part of their lives—which is an honor past measure—for others, it means constructing a basis. We’re sturdy, and we discover a manner by means of.

“It is a painful a part of my story. The expertise was horrible. However it doesn’t come near defining me, in the identical manner that no different single a part of my story defines me. No single a part of anybody’s story defines them,” Hargitay writes in conclusion. “I’m turning 60, and I’m so deeply grateful for the place I’m. I’m renewed and I’m flooded with compassion for all of us who’ve suffered. And I’m nonetheless proudly in course of.”

You possibly can learn the total essay right here.

For those who or somebody is affected by sexual abuse, contact the RAINN Nationwide Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-4673 or go to rainn.org.