TV personality Valerie Bertinelli has revealed that she was sexually abused at age 11 in her new book, and says she never planned to share as much as she did.
“I had no plans to reveal this,” Bertinelli, now 65, told People in an interview published Wednesday. “This was going to be a book about teaching people how to love themselves. I did not know that I would go this far.”
Bertinelli’s book, “Getting Naked,” will come out on March 10. Discussing the process of writing about her abuse, she explained, “I guess because I’m healing from it, it’s not so scary anymore. I can say it out loud. I was sexually assaulted. It doesn’t feel like it owns me anymore.”
While writing the book, Bertinelli said, she explored “the parts that I thought were shameful and come to find out they’re not. They’re all kinds of different facets of what makes us who we are.”
Bertinelli purposely opened the chapter where she discusses her abuse with a photo of herself at age 11 “because that was the little girl that was sexually abused,” she said.
