Vanessa Williams has revealed how she ‘buried’ being molested at just 10-years-old for decades, because she feared her father wouldn’t be able to cope with the knowledge.
The actress, 62, first revealed her sexual abuse ordeal in her 2012 memoir, You Have No Idea, which she co-wrote with her late mother, Helen Williams.
She detailed how an 18-year-old girl had performed oral sex on her when she was on holiday with her friend and their family’s friends in California.
While she contemplated telling her parents about what happened, Vanessa explained that she had returned home to the news that her uncle had died, leaving her dad devastated.
Unwilling to make her family’s pain worse, the Desperate Housewives star said she felt unable to tell anyone what had happened to her and so suppressed it for years.
Speaking to Jamie Laing on his Great Company podcast, she explained how many people from that era had similar experiences of being abused and hiding it for years.
Vanessa Williams has revealed how she ‘buried’ being molested at just 10-years-old for decades, because she feared her father wouldn’t be able to cope with the knowledge (seen in 2024)
The actress, 62, first revealed her sexual abuse ordeal in her 2012 memoir, detailing how an 18-year-old girl had performed oral sex on her when she was on holiday with her friend and their family’s friends in California
Vanessa reflected: ‘It was a different time. It is not an excuse, but it is also kind of sad when you realise it’s happened to so many people. It was heartbreaking.
‘And as a parent… I mean I didn’t even mention it until my father had passed away. By the time we wrote the book together, my mother said, “Your father could not have handled it”. Because as a father you want to be a protector.’
‘I remember when it happened,’ she went on: ‘I was getting off the plane because it happened in California – I was with a friend on a trip with their family friends.
‘So I came back and my uncle had just died and I remember coming up and my dad was just ashen, like pale, and I knew that something had gone wrong and they said that his younger brother had died.
‘So it wasn’t even like I had a moment to say this happened and I feel uncomfortable. That was like the reality was hitting me. I was like “okay, I’m not even going to bring that up.” So that’s kind of what my reality was and I just buried it.
‘And also your parents, you really don’t want to tell. I mean unless you’ve got a really extraordinarily close relationship it’s hard to talk to your parents about anything that’s unusual.’
Vanessa previously detailed that traumatic summer on Oprah’s Master Class in 2014, describing how she’d viewed the woman who assaulted her as a ‘cool girl’, but knew that what happened between them ‘wasn’t supposed to be happening.’
‘She was one of the cool girls. She made you want to feel like you were a grown-up,’ the West End star recalled.
Speaking to Jamie Laing on his Great Company podcast, she said she felt unable to tell anyone what had happened to her and so suppressed it for years
She described how one night when both her and her friend were sleeping, the older girl had snuck into their room to wake her up, saying: ‘She told me to lie down on the floor. She took my bottoms off and she said, “Be quiet”. She went down on me.’
Vanessa explained how she was so young that she couldn’t really understand what was happening and was conflicted about the encounter.
‘I had no idea what it was, but I knew it felt good,’ she said. ‘I knew it felt good, but was also something that was not supposed to be happening.’
‘Because it feels good, you’re like, OK, well this is supposed to be normal. That’s not normal for a 10-year-old to be seduced,’ she said.
She explained how she not fully grasp the gravity of the incident until college, but that it had lasting effects on her, causing her to rebel and pull away from her parents
Vanessa said that being sexualized at an inappropriately early age took away some of her innocence and made her ‘more sexually promiscuous’.
‘It awakens your sexuality at an age where it shouldn’t be awakened,’ the Ugly Betty star said candidly.
‘Had that not happened in my life and had I had an opportunity to have a normal courtship with a boyfriend at 16 or whatever… there wouldn’t have been that shame that was always haunting me.
Vanessa also opened up to Jamie about she and her family were flooded with death threats and hate mail after she became the first black Miss America in 1983 (pictured)
She made history when she became the first black woman to win the famous pageant at just 20-years-old, but her trailblazing triumph also came with a torrent of racist vitriol
‘It made me more sexually promiscuous and more sexually curious at a younger age than I should have been.’
Vanessa also opened up to Jamie about she and her family were flooded with death threats and hate mail after she became the first black Miss America in 1983.
She made history when she became the first black woman to win the famous pageant at just 20-years-old, but her trailblazing triumph also came with a torrent of racist vitriol.
The Desperate Housewives star explained how she’d entered the pageant world on a ‘lark’, and had been entirely unprepared for her win, saying: ‘At 20 years old my world completely changed.’
However, she revealed that as soon as she was crowned, people began sending her death threats, but that her parents had kept the seriousness of the situation from her in an attempt to shield her from the fear.
‘I had death threats as soon as I won, at 20 years old. Luckily they kept a lot from me because I think I would have been more terrified, had I known,’ Vanessa said.
‘My parents had a box and they would put all the death threats in it. The FBI had all of the tracking. Even when I would do appearances, they would be like, “Be careful when you go to Chicago.” And I had no idea how crazy it was because they didn’t want me to freak out.’
She continued: ‘People sent threatening calls to our home phone. People would call and harass them like, “We’re going to kill your daughter. We know where you are. We’re going to come after you.” So, it wasn’t just she won a beauty pageant. It was nuts.’
The star was then forced to give up her crown towards the end of her reign as Miss America, when nude photographs she’d taken privately were infamously sold and published in Penthouse magazine (pictured in 1984)
Recalling what how aware she was of the danger at the time, she said: ‘I got an inkling when I came home to my hometown. We had a hometown parade and there were sharpshooters on top of the buildings and I live in a tiny town and I was like, “Wow, that’s unusual.”
‘Then one time when I was doing an appearance in Alabama, I was supposed to be on the back of a convertible, and before we started they said, “You know what? We’re going to put the roof up.” And I again I thought okay that’s a little unusual.
‘Another time I was in a motel and they said, “Don’t don’t leave your room unless you talk to your chaperone in the room next door.” So those were just hints of that gave me the sense that they didn’t really want to tell me everything, but that there was danger.’
But Vanessa candidly admitted that four decades on and she didn’t believe that things had improved very much.
‘It was a very stressful year,’ she said. ‘We all lived through it, but you know I always think that’s in the past and then I look at the racism and the judgement and the triggers that everyone has now and it’s like did we make any progress at all? Can’t we just accept the myriad of cultures and backgrounds that we all live?’
The star was then forced to give up her crown towards the end of her reign as Miss America, when nude photographs she’d taken privately were infamously sold and published in Penthouse magazine.
Her former boss photographer Tom Chiapel sold nude pictures he’d taken of her in 1982 to Penthouse magazine for $50K without her consent.
Officials gave Vanessa 72 hours to resign after Miss America’s sponsors threatened to pull out, but she was allowed to keep her crown and scholarship money.
Two months later, the 11-time Grammy nominee filed a $500M lawsuit against Chiapel and Penthouse publisher Bob Guccione, which she dropped a year later.
Vanessa recalled the ‘betrayal’ on The Jonathan Ross Show in February last year, saying: ‘The photographer that took these did not have a release and sold them behind my back.
‘It was betrayal, it was not good. It made me who I am and in retrospect there would have been nothing that I could have done to navigate better.’
She added: ‘I thank my parents who were so supportive and also the community who said “we’re here and we believe in you.”
‘It was a lot to deal with at 21 years old. I only had four weeks left to go in my reign and this all came out of the blue – it was a lot to manage.’
If you have been affected by sexual assault, contact Rape Crisis on 0808 500 2222 or use the online chat
If you have concerns about child sexual abuse, or you think something isn’t right, call the NSPCC helpline on 0808 800 5000
