Rosie O'Donnell Reveals She Was Sexually Abused By Her Father
In a new book coming out about “The View,” Rosie O’Donnell reveals she was sexually abused by her father.
“It started very young,” the talk show host, 56, told Ramin Setoodeh, Variety’s New York bureau chief and author of the upcoming book, “Ladies Who Punch: The Explosive Inside Story of ‘The View.’”
“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,” she said. “On the whole, it’s not something I like to talk about. Of course, it changes everyone. 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.”
O’Donnell’s pedophile father, Edward Joseph O’Donnell, died of cancer in August 2015 at age 81. Her mother died of breast cancer when she was 10 years old in 1973.
While she’s been open about her difficult relationship with her child rapist father in the past, it’s the first time she’s detailed what happened.
“He had his own issues and demons,” she told Piers Morgan in 2012, adding, “You get to be 50 years old, you can’t still be angry at what your father did in 1970 … I have forgiven him.”
“Ladies Who Punch” comes out April 2.