Rosie O’Donnell always had the courage to survive and now she has found the courage to speak up.
The television and Broadway personality reveals to Variety how she was sexually abused by her father, Edward Joseph. “It started very young,” O’Donnell tells the publication’s New York bureau chief, Ramin Setoodeh. “And then when my mother died, it sort of ended in a weird way, because then he was with these five children to take care of.”
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“On the whole, it’s not something I like to talk about. Of course, it changes everyone,” she continues. “Any child who is put in that position, especially by someone in the family, you feel completely powerless and stuck, because the person you would tell is the person doing it.”
This is the first time O’Donnell, 56, has publicly opened up about her sexual abuse; however, she has been a long time advocate of sex abuse victims.
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“I’m very anti-Roman Polanski and anti-Woody Allen,” O’Donnell says. “It’s a pretty clear line for me.”
O’Donnell’s full story will be shared in the upcoming book, Ladies Who Punch: The Explosive Inside Story of ‘The View’. The book will be released on April 2.
