Padma Lakshmi reveals in her new memoir, Love, Loss and What We Ate, that she was sexually abused as a child.
The model and Top Chef executive producer says she was molested at the age of seven by a friend of her former stepfather.
Sitting down with People magazine, the 45-year-old star explained why she chose to speak out now. “I wanted to talk about it because if women like me don’t talk about it, who will?”; she said.
RELATED: Sheryl Underwood Gets Candid About Sexual Abuse & Husband’s Suicide
Lakshmi, who sometimes had to share a bed with this man, recalls the details of the abuse in her book. “I woke up to his hand in my underpants. He took my hand and placed it inside his briefs. I don’t know how many times it happened before, since I suspect I slept through some incidents.”;
Speaking with People’s Jess Cagle, the television personality described the impact it had on her life’s trajectory. “Once you take a girl’s innocence, you can never get it back. What I remember more is telling my mother what happened and her believing me and then she and I telling someone else that it happened and that person not believing me. And then the next week, I was sent to India.
“It’s not something I think about that much anymore,”; she continued. “But it was the catalyst for a lot of things. It was the catalyst for my mother’s divorce, for me going to India. It was the catalyst for me being different about my body and just less open in the world. It was a loss of innocence in a way. What happened to me was not even that bad compared to what happens to many young girls and boys. But it was something that happened. I didn’t want to dwell on it.”;
Read an excerpt from Lakshmi’s new book in this week’s issue of People magazine, out on newsstands this Friday.
Wath the magazine’s exclusive interview with the Lakshmi below.
