Mariska Hargitay has revealed that she was raped by her friend when she was in her 30s.
“It wasn’t sexual at all. It was dominance and control. Overpowering control,” she writes in a first-person essay for People magazine.
“He was a friend. Then he wasn’t.”
The “Law & Order: SVU” star, who details the terror she felt at the time, recalls trying “all the ways” she knew to “get out of it” but couldn’t escape as he grabbed her by the arms and held her down.
“I didn’t want it to escalate to violence. I now know it was already sexual violence, but I was afraid he would become physically violent,” she writes.
“I went into freeze mode, a common trauma response when there is no option to escape. I checked out of my body.”
Hargitay, 59, admits she downplayed the assault and tried to push it to the back of her mind so she could “get through” the trauma.
“Now I honor that part: I did what I had to do to survive,” she shares.
The “Lake Placid” star built her foundation, Joyful Heart, to help victims of sexual assault, domestic violence and child abuse, but now she says it helped her do the work she needed to come to terms with what happened to her.
“I think I also needed to see what healing could look like. I look back on speeches where I said, ‘I’m not a survivor,’” she writes. “I wasn’t being untruthful; it wasn’t how I thought of myself.”
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Hargitay even recalls telling her husband of nearly 20 years, Peter Hermann, that what she went through wasn’t rape, believing her experience was lesser of an offense.
The longtime actress says the survivors who credited her “SVU” role as Olivia Benson with helping them navigate through their trauma are actually the people who helped her heal.
“This is a painful part of my story. The experience was horrible. But it doesn’t come close to defining me, in the same way that no other single part of my story defines me,” she concludes her essay.
“No single part of anyone’s story defines them.”
If you or someone you know is affected by any of the issues raised in this story, call the Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-330-0226.
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